DUKE 
UNIVERSITY 


DIVINITY SCHOOL 
LIBRARY 


| a 


‘ 


ae Ss. : 


THE 


i 
— LIFE 


OF 


ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON: 


WITH 


BRIEF EXTRACTS FROM HIS WRITINGS. 


PUBLISHED BY THE 


AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 


150 NASSAU-STREET, NEW-YORK. 


Div. S. 


Pa. sik) 


CONTENTS.© Sime 7h 


CHAPTER I. 


EARLY LIFE, AND WHILE MINISTER AT NEWBOTTLE, SCOTLAND, AND 
PRINCIPAL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. 1611-1661. 


Parentage—Early Life—Conversion—Academical Course— 
Residence at Douay, France—Enters on the Ministry at 
Newbottle, near Edinburgh—Meekness and Fidelity as a 
Pastor for eleven Years—Indifference to the loss of Money 
—Calmness in Danger—Is chosen Principal of the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh—His Fidelity to this Trust for ten 
AVAT ee 6 ides MEEPS 0. care oO fin cactaie ton tye Page 5 


CHAPTER II. 


WHILE BISHOP OF DUNBLANE, SCOTLAND, AND ARCHBISHOP OF 
eiascow. 1661-1674. 


Reluctantly accepts the Office of Bishop—Chooses the less 
conspicuous See of Dunblane—Avoids Public Display— 
Spirituality and Fidelity to his Charge—Cherishes a Pious 
Ministry—Dissuades from Controversy—Grieved by Acts 
of Oppression, he visits the King and proposes to resign— 
Second visit to the King—Appointed Archbishop of Glas- 
gow—Ineffectual Efforts for Peace—Faithfulness to the 
Clergy—Letters Describing the State of Things—Visits 
London, and tenders his Resignation—His Reasons for re- 
SELIM MMMM) shove hau st seis) atrs\-4 cllceds: oy av otietetichn halen seor sieht 17 


CHAPTER III. 


FROM HIS RESIGNING THE CHARGE OF ARCHBISHOP TO HIS DEATH. 
HIS CHARACTER AND CORRESPONDENCE. 1674-1684. 


His love of Retirement—Retires to Broadhurst, Sussex—The 
King requests him to mediate between Parties in Scotland— 
Attack of Pleurisy, and sudden Death in London—Bishop 
Burnet’s Eulogy—His Person—lIllustrations of his Charac- 


lv 


CONTENTS. 


ter and Piety—His love of Prayer, of the Scriptures, of the 
Sabbath, of Holiness—Union with Christ—Renunciation of 
Worldly Pleasures—Anecdotes—The Secret Things of God 
—When to Speak—Sympathy with the Afflicted—Humility 
—On the Death of a Child—Natural Scenery and Music— 
Desire to depart . . .."<-qgreyste eee Page 53 


CHAPTER IV. 


BRIEF SKETCH OF HiS WRITINGS. 


His Powers of Mind and Stores of Knowledge—His Charac- 


ter eminently Evangelical—Unction of his Sermons and 
Writings—Beautiful Selections—Practical and Experimen- 
tal Character of his Productions—Commentary on Peter, 
on the Lord’s Prayer, on the Ten Commandments, ete.— 
Testimony of Dr. Doddridge—On Christian Union and 
other topics—Rules fora Holy Life.... ......... $8 


THE 


LIFE 


OF 


ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


CHAPTER I. 


EARLY LIFE, AND WHILE MINISTER AT NEWBOTTLE, SCOTLAND, 
AND PRINCIPAL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. 


Noruine particular is recorded relative to the 
remote ancestors of Archbishop Leighton. His 
father, Dr. Alexander Leighton, a Scots’ clergy- 
man, was settled in London in the reign of King 
Charles I. He suffered very severely from the ar- 
bitrary measures of those times, being treated with 
much cruelty in the year 1630, by the sentence of 
the High Commission Court, and the Star Chamber ; 
two oppressive tribunals which then existed. But 
we need not dwell upon the painful subject. Let 
us be thankful for the privileges that we enjoy, and 
endeavor to improve them to our own spiritual ad- 
vancement, and the extension of the cause of Christ 
at home and abroad. 

Dr. Alexander Leighton had four children who 


6 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


attained maturity ; two sons, and two daughters, of 
whom Robert was the eldest: his place of birth ap- 
pears to have been Edinburgh, and the time, the 
year 1611. 

Robert Leighton, after being instructed in the 
common parts of education, and initiated into the 
higher branches, was sent to the University of Edin- 
burgh. From the authority of his sister, we learn 
that his early youth was distinguished by great 
teachableness and attention, and that his parents 
were greatly pleased with his extraordinary indif- 
ference to the common follies of childhood and 
youth. 

Highly as Robert Leighton was favored in his 
religious education, and distinguished as he was 
above other youth, he deeply felt the depravity of 
human nature ; and frequently adverts, in his writ- 
ings, to man’s natural state. The following extract 
will show his sentiments on this subject: “ The 
soul of man, unconverted, is no other but a den of 
impure lusts, wherein dwell pride, uncleanness, 
avarice, malice, etc., just as Babylon is described 
in Rev. xviii. 2; Isa. xiii. 21. Were a man’s eyes 
opened, he would as much abhor to remain with 
himself in that condition, ‘as to dwell in a house 
full of snakes and serpents,’ as St. Augustine says. 
And the first part of conversion is at once to rid the 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 7 


soul of these noisome inhabitants, for there is none 
at all found naturally vacant and free from them.” 
“The estate of lost mankind is indeed nothing but 
darkness, being destitute of all spiritual truth and 
comfort, and tending to utter and everlasting dark- 
ness.” 

We have no particulars of the way in which the 
mind of Leighton was brought from nature’s dark- 
ness into the light of the Gospel; this probably is 
owing to his retired habits, and the public confu- 
sions of those times. 

At an early age, however, he gave strong indica- 
tions of that eminent piety for which he was after- 
wards distinguished. He also showed that he pos- 
sessed considerable talents for the acquisition of 
knowledge. His views and studies were directed 
toward the Christian ministry from an early period 
of his life. By his quick progress in learning, he 
excited the admiration of his fellow students, while 
he gained their esteem by the gentleness of his tem- 
per and the prudence of his conduct. His good 
behavior and talents also attracted the attention of 
his superiors; and one of them, in a letter to Dr. 
Leighton, congratulated him on having a son in 
whom Providence had made him abundant compen- 
sation for his sufferings. 

Young Leighton finished his academical course 


8 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


with great applause. After taking his degree, he 
went abroad, and lived several years in France, 
particularly at Douay, where some of his relations 
resided. Here he appears to have met with some 
persons whose lives were formed on the strictest 
rules of self-denial, and his future character ap- 
pears to have been somewhat influenced by their 
example. 

On his return to Scotland, having passed through 
the usual course of trial for the ministry in that 
country, he was unanimously called by the congre- 
gation of Newbottle, near Edinburgh, and was or- 
dained there about the thirtieth year of his age, on 
the 16th of December, 1641. In postponing to so 
ripe an age his entrance on the ministry, as well as 
in retiring so early as he did from its more laborious 
province, he acted agreeably to his avowed opinion, 
that “‘some men preach too soon, and some too long.” 
His judgment of what is most reverent toward God 
corresponded with those canons of the Levitical eco- 
nomy, which prescribe a mature age for engaging 
in the more arduous department of the sacerdotal 
office, and grant an honorable superannuation at that 
period of life, when the strength of mind and body 
commonly begins to decay. 

Leighton remained at Newbottle several years ; 
and proved himself to be a workman who needeth 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 9 


not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of 
truth. He was most assiduous in discharging the 
various duties of his office. His preparation for the 
pulpit was very exact. He diligently visited the 
poor, the sick, and afflicted of his flock; and pro- 
moted personal, domestic, social, and public religion 
to the utmost of his power, by precept, example, 
and many prayers. This faithful minister of Christ 
lived in a plain and retired manner; he had an 
utter aversion to mixed company; was extremely 
cautious in the choice of his friends ; and was never 
happier than when engaged in the duties of his 
office, or in his closet, storing his comprehensive 
mind with sacred knowledge, and communing with 
his own heart and with God. 

His mind was not fitted for bustle and_ strife. 
Partly from timidity and modesty, partly from his 
inclination for peace, he seldom attended meetings 
of the presbytery, or of ministers and elders from 
neighboring congregations. He was, however, oc- 
casionally present ; and it being the custom for the 
presbytery to inquire of the several brethren, twice 
a year, “ Whether they preached up the times ?” 
Leighton, when thus interrogated, acknowledged his 
omission, and apologized for it, saying, “If all the 
brethren have preached up the times, may not one 
poor brother be suffered to preach up Christ Jesus 


10 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


and eternity ?” It was his aim not to win prose- 
lytes to a party, but converts to Jesus Christ. 

The superiority of Leighton’s mind to temporal 
things, was also ciearly manifested by his indiffer- 
ence to worldly riches. At his father’s death he 
came into possession of about a thousand pounds, 
which sum was, in fact, his whole property. This 
he placed in the hands of a merchant, without ade- 
quate security. His brother-in-law, Mr. Light- 
maker, urged him to come to London to vest it 
more safely. Leighton’s reply is characteristic : 
the following is an extract : 

“] thank you for your letter. That you give me 
notice of, I desire to consider as becomes a Chris- 
tian, and to prepare to wait for my own remoyal. 
Any pittance belonging to me may possibly be use- 
ful and needful for my subsistence ; but iruly, if 
something else draw me not, I shall never bestow 
so long a journey on what I account so mean a 
business. Above all things, I wish for myself and 
you all, our daily increase in likeness to Jesus 
Christ, and growing heavenwards, where he is who 
is our treasure.” In a short time the merchant 
failed, and Leighton’s patrimony was lost. The 
following letter to his brother-in-law will show the 
spirit with which he bore this trial : 

“Your kind advice I cannot but thank you for, 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 11 


but I am not easily taught that lesson. I confess it 
is the wiser way to trust nobody; but there is so 
much of the fool in my nature, as carries me rather 
to the other extreme, to trust everybody. Yet I 
will venture to take the best means I can in that 
little business you write of. It is true, there is 
a lawful, yea, a needful diligence in such things ; 
but, alas! how poor are they to the portion of be- 
lievers where our treasure is. 

“ The little that was in Mr. E.’s hands has failed 
me; but I shall either have no need of it, or be 
supplied some other way. nd this is the relief of 
my rolling thoughts, that while I am writing this, 
this moment is passing away; and that all the 
hazards of want and sickness shall be at an end. 
My mother writes to me, and presses my coming up. 
I know not yet if that can be; but I intend, God 
willing, so soon as I can conveniently, if I come 
not, to take some course that things be done as if I 
were there. I hope you will have patience in the 
mean time. Remember my love to my sisters. 
The Lord be with you, and lead you in his ways.” 

When Leighton visited England, and his recent 
loss was adverted to by Mr. Lightmaker, who re- 
gretted that he had misplaced his confidence, “ Oh, 
no more of that,” cried Leighton, “the good man 
has escaped from the care and vexation of that 


12 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


business.” ‘“ What, is that all you make of the mat- 
ter?” rejoined his brother-in-law, with surprise: 
“Truly,” answered Leighton, “if the Duke of 
Newcastle, after losing nineteen times as much of 
yearly income, can dance and sing, and the solid 
hopes of Christianity will not avail to support us, 
we had better be as the world.” 

Leighton, in his writings, often speaks of the 
world in a way consistent with his superiority to its 
cares and pleasures. Hence he observes, “ Our 
Saviour tells us expressly, that man’s life consisteth 
not in the abundance of the things he possesseth ; 
Luke xii. 15. Think you great and rich persons 
live more content ?—believe it not. If they will 
deal freely they can tell you the contrary, that 
there is nothing but a show in them, and that great 
estates and places have great grief and cares at- 
tending them, as shadows are proportioned to their 
bodies. 

“ And if they have no*real crosses, luxury frames 
troubles to itself, variety of dishes corrupting the 
stomach, and causing variety of diseases ; and vain 
discontents arise, that trouble men as much as 
greater, be it but this hawk flies not well, or that 
dog runs not well, to men whose hearts are in 
those games. 

“So then I say, this is first to be regulated ; all 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 13 


childish vain needless cares are to be discharged, 
and, as being unfit to cast on thy God, are to be 
quite cast out of thy heart. Entertain no care at 
all but such as thou mayest put into God’s hands 
and make his on thy behalf,—such as he will take 
off thy hand, and undertake for thee. 

« All needful lawful care, and that only, will he 
receive: so then rid thyself quite of all that thou 
canst not take this course with, and then, without 
seruple, take confidently this course with all the 
rest. Seek a well-regulated sober spirit. In the 
things of this life be content with food and raiment ; 
not delicates, but food ; not ornament, but raiment ; 
and conclude that what thy Father carves to thee is 
best for thee, the fittest- measure, for he knows it, 
and loves thee wisely. This course our Saviour 
would have thee take, Matt. vi. 31; first to cut of 
superfluous care, then to turn over on thy God the 
eare of what is necessary. He will look to what 
thou hast engaged him for, and he can and will give 
thee beyond that if he sees it fit.” 

These views of superiority to worldly cares and 
anxieties were not mere theory. The following in- 
cident showed his admirable self-possession in the 
prospect of death. He had taken the water at the 
Savoy Stairs, in company with his brother, Sir 
Ellis Leighton, his lady, and some others, and was 


14 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


on his way to Lambeth, when, owing to some mis- 
management, the boat was in great danger of sink- 
ing. While the rest of the party were pale with 
terror, and most of them crying out, Leighton never 
for a moment lost his accustomed serenity. To 
some who afterwards expressed their astonishment 
at his calmness, he replied, “ Why, what harm 
would it have been if we had all been safe landed 
on THE OTHER SIDE?” In the habit of dying daily, 
and of daily conversing with the world of spirits, 
he could never be surprised or disconcerted by a 
summons to depart out of the body. 

Another anecdote will show his pious calmness 
in the time of danger. During the civil wars, 
when the royal army was lying in Scotland, Leigh- 
ton was anxious to visit his brother, who bore arms 
in the king’s service, before an engagement which 
was daily expected to take place. On his way to 
the camp he was benighted in the midst of a vast 
thicket, and having deviated from the path, he 
sought in vain for an outlet. Almost spent with 
fatigue and hunger, he began to think his situation 
desperate; and dismounting, he spread his cloak 
upon the ground, and knelt down to pray. He 
calmly resigned his soul to God, entreating, how- 
ever, that if it were not the Divine pleasure for him 
then to conclude his days, some way of deliverance 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 15 


might be opened. Then remounting his horse, he 
threw the reins upon its neck, and the animal left 
to itself, or rather to the care of Almighty Provi- 
dence, threaded all the mazes of the wood, and 
made straight into the high road. 

In the year 1652, after eleven years of close at- 
tention to his studies as a minister, he tendered his 
resignation to the presbytery. At first it was de- 
clined, but the year following they were induced to 
accept it, and on February 3, 1653, his ministerial 
connection with Newbottle was dissolved. Shortly 
after he was chosen Principal of the University of 
Edinburgh. In this situation Leighton was emi- 
nently useful. He revived the practice of deliver- 
ing, once in the week, a Latin lecture on some 
theological subject :—these lectures attracted great 
attention, and the public hall was thronged with 
auditors, who were delighted with the purity of his 
style, and with his animated delivery, as well as 
with the matter of his discourses.* To the stu- 
dents under his care he was indefatigably attentive, 
instructing them singly as well as collectively ; and 
to many youths of capacity and distinction his wise 
and affectionate exhortations were permanently ben- 
eficial. In this office he remained for nearly ten 


* These Lectures have been translated into English. 


16 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


years, the ornament and delight of the University, 
and a blessing to studious youth. 

Of his proceedings, while he held this academi- 
cal post, some particulars are extant, which bespeak 
him gifted with talents for active business. Two 
years after his appointment, he was deputed by the 
Provost and Council, to apply to the Protector in- 
London, for an augmentation of the revenues of the 
college. A minute of the town council register 
indicates that his mission was successful. 

The year following, he called the attention of the 
magistrates to a report of some suspicious houses 
having been detected in the neighborhood of the 
college, and effectual measures were set on foot, at 
his suggestion, for extirpating the nuisance. 

Neither was he regardless of those subordinate 
establishments, to which, as they were not compre- 
hended within the immediate circle of his duties, a 
principal of austerer dignity, or of inferior zeal, 
might not have condescended. Observing that the 
collegians made little way in the higher branches of 
science and literature, he searched into the cause 
of their deficiency, and quickly found it in the 
want of a sound rudimental education. For the 
cure of this evil he proposed that grammar-schools 
should be founded and suitably endowed. 

In the same year he offered to preach in the col- 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 17 


lege hall to the scholars, once on the Sabbath of 
every third or fourth week, taking turns with the 
professors ; an offer which appears to have been 
accepted by the town Council. 


CHAPTER II. 


WHILE BISHOP OF DUNBLANE, SCOTLAND, AND ARCHBISHOP OF 
GLASGOW. 

Tue course of our narrative has now brought us 
to the period when Leighton was called to the epis- 
copal office. Charles II. had determined to intro- 
duce episcopacy into Scotland, though this measure 
was opposed to the views and feelings of the great 
body of the people. 

Dr. Leighton, whose views of episcopacy itself 
were extremely moderate, and who had no idea that 
the establishment of it in Scotland would produce 
such effects as followed, had gone to Bath for his 
health. He courted no preferment, and seems to 
have indulged no wish for any dignity in the church. 
Being invited to London, or going thither to visit 
his brother and friends, the acceptance of a see in 
Scotland was urged upon him both by the Court and 


his own connections. His character for learning, 
Arch. Leigh. J 


18 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


piety, moderation, and candor, it was thought, would 
greatly promote the new scheme. It is probable, 
likewise, that the hope of accommodating differ- 
ences between the opposite parties, or, at least, of 
softening their mutual animosity, induced the doc- 
tor to be overcome by repeated solicitations. One 
circumstance, scarcely noticed by some of his 
biographers, appears to have had no small weight 
in determining his mind. His brother, Sir Elisha, 
who was a courtier and ambitious of preferment, 
gained his confidence by strong professions of piety, 
and expected to oblige the king by procuring the 
doctor’s acquiescence, and to rise at court through 
his advancement. 

Perhaps this transaction, which has been thought 
to cast a shade over his constancy and disinterest- 
edness, may appear to the candid and intelligent 
reasoner, when thoroughly sifted, to exhibit those 
qualities with singular lustre. Taking in the whole 
system of his life before and after his consecration, 
we see him an example of modesty, gravity, and 
habitual recollection of spirit ; a despiser of riches, 
and show, and figure, and selfish indulgences; an 
exile in heart from this world of sensible objects ; 
one, whose prime delight it was to dwell in solitary 
converse with God, and with the things that are 
invisible and eternal. 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 19 


The following letter, which Leighton addressed to 
the Rev. James Aird, of Torry, will show the con- 
flict which he endured at this period. 


“My pear Frienp, 

“T have received from you the kindest letter that 
ever you wrote me, and that you may know I take 
it so, I return you the free and friendly advice, 
never to judge any man before you hear him, nor 
any business by one side of it. Were you here to 
see the other, I am confident your thoughts and 
mine would be the same. You have both too much 
knowledge of me, and too much charity, to think 
that either such little contemptible scraps of honor 
or riches sought in that part of the world with so 
much reproach, or any human complacency in the 
world, will be admitted to decide so grave a ques- 
tion, or that I should sell (to speak no higher) the 
very sensual pleasure of my retirement for a rattle, 
far less deliberately do anything that I judge of: 
fends God. For thie offence of good people in cases 
indifferent in themselves, but not accounted so by 
them, whatsoever you do or do not, you shall offend 
some good people on the one side or other; and for 
those with you, the great fallacy in this business is, 
that they have misreckoned themselves in taking 


20 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


my silence and their zeal to have been consent and 
participation ; which, how great a mistake it is, 
few know better or so well as yourself. And the 
truth is, I did see approaching an inevitable neces- 
sity to strain with them in divers practices, in what 
station soever remaining in Britain; and to have 
escaped further off (which hath been in my thoughts) 
would have been the greatest scandal of all. And 
what will you say, if there be in this thing some- 
what of that you mention, and would allow of 
reconciling the devout on different sides, and of 
enlarging those good souls you meet with from their 
little fears, though possibly with little success ? 
Yet the design is commendable, pardonable at least. 
However, one comfort I have, that in what is pressed 
on me there is the least of my own choice, yea, on 
the contrary, the strongest aversion that ever I had 
to anything in my life: the difficulty, in short, lies 
in a necessity of either owning a scruple which I 
have not, or the rudest disobedience to authority 
that may be. The truth is, ] am yet importuning 
and struggling for a liberation, and look upward for 
it; but, whatsoever be the issue, I look beyond it in 
this weary, weary, wretched life, through which the 
hand I have resigned it to, I trust, will lead me in 
the path of his own choosing ; and, so that I may 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 21 


please him, I am satisfied. I hope, if ever we meet, 
you will find me, in the love of solitude and a 
devout life, 

“Your unaltered brother and friend, R. L.” 

“When I set pen to paper, I intended not to 
exceed half a dozen lines, but slid on insensibly 
thus far ; but though I should fill the paper on all 
sides, still the right view of this business would be 
necessarily suspended till our meeting. Meanwhile, 
hope well of me, and pray for me. This word 
I will add, that, as there has been nothing of my 
choice in the thing, so, 1 undergo it, if it must be, 
as a mortification, and that greater than a cell and 
hair-cloth ; and whether any will believe this, I am 
not careful.” 


Leighton was very averse to his own promotion ; 
his nephew’s account states, that he was only over- 
come by a peremptory order of the Court, requiring 
him to accept it, unless he thought in his conscience 
that the episcopal office was unlawful. Unable to 
screen himself behind this opinion, which he was 
far from entertaining, he surrendered at length to 
the royal will, that he might not incur the guilt of 
contumacy toward the king, or of shrinking from a 
service to which a greater Potentate seemed to 
summon him. 


22 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


Leighton felt extremely anxious to reconcile the 
jarring parties in his own country ; and to obtain so 
desirable an object, he consented to expose himself 
to great personal sacrifices. Had it been possible 
for human virtue to have prevented the bloody dis- 
cord which shortly overcast the spiritual firmament, 
and rent the Scottish church like an earthquake, 
Leighton could not have failed. He soon found 
that he was placed in unpleasant circumstances ; for 
on any point which seemed to touch the substance 
of Christian piety, he was exquisitely sensible. 
Hence his disgust at the feasting and jollity with 
which the consecration of the new bishops was 
celebrated. It grieved this good man to see any- 
thing of sensual levity mixed up with the solemn 
business to which they were set apart; and the 
absence of that seriousness, and spirit of prayer, 
which became the commencement of such an under- 
taking as the new-modelling of a church, oppressed 
his mind with gloomy presages. ‘These were in- 
creased when he found Archbishop Sharp unpre- 
pared with any plan for healing the wounds of the 
church, for purging out its corruptions, for rectify- 
ing its disorders, and for kindling in it a livelier 
flame of true piety. On these great objects Leigh- 
ton was anxious to begin without delay—he already 
had conceived a process for the union of parties in 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 23 


Scotland, and for reforming the public services of 
religion, and reducing them to a method more 
orderly and better adapted for general edification. 
But in these Christian projects he found no auxiliary. 
Archbishop Sharp appears to have been neither able 
to understand the spirit, nor disposed to forward the 
schemes, of Leighton, to whose pious disinterested- 
ness the apparent worldliness of his colleagues 
formed a striking contrast. Leighton’s sad fore- 
bodings were not a little confirmed, by the clear 
development that was daily taking place of the 
principles by which Archbishop Sharp was ac- 
tuated. He remarked to Burnet, “In the whole 
progress of that affair there appeared such cross 
characters of an angry Providence, that how fully 
soever he was satisfied in his own mind as to epis- 
copacy itself, yet it seemed that God was against 
them, and that they were not like to be the men 
that should build up his church ; so that the strug- 
gling about it seemed to him like fighting against 
God.” 

On the 12th of December, 1661, four of the 
persons selected as bishops for Scotland received 
consecration in London. Leighton, at his special 
request, was appointed to the inconsiderable see of 
Dunblane, in Perthshire. Early in the following 
year, the new bishops proceeded in one coach to 


24 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


Edinburgh. Between Leighton and his colleagues, 
however, there was such a want of sympathy, as 
made it very irksome to him to journey in their 
company ; and having learned that it was their inten- 
tion to make a grand entry into Edinburgh, he 
quitted them at Morpeth, and arrived some days 
before the rest of the party. Burnet describes him 
to have been a downcast spectator of the pomp and 
parade with which the other three bishops were 
escorted into the Scottish metropolis; and the spirit 
of wise and pious men was abashed, when they 
contrasted this ostentatious pageantry with the 
example of the true Bishop of souls. 

In his fixed aversion to worldly honors, Leighton 
besought his friends not to give him the appellation 
of Lord, and was uneasy at ever being addressed by 
that title. By this singularity he gave umbrage to 
his colleagues, and laid himself open to the charge 
of an affectation, proceeding from a narrow-minded 
squeamishness, if not from a refinement of vanity: 
or, indeed, this solicitude to divest his office of its 
usual dignities, might be ill-naturedly ascribed to 
his not being thoroughly satisfied with the function 
itself, and seeking to compound with his conscience 
by a sacrifice of external distinction. 

Shortly after their arrival in Edinburgh, the 
bishops were formally invited to take their seats in 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 25 


Parliament ; not that any invitation was requisite to 
authorise their attendance, but it was deemed a 
proper token of respect. By all, except the Bishop 
of Dunblane, the call was obeyed. He resolved 
from the beginning never to mix in Parliament, 
unless some matter affecting the interests of religion 
were in agitation ; and to this resolution he steadily 
adhered. His efforts to promote union were thwarted 
by party spirit: he therefore sought the privacy in 
which he delighted, in the diocess of Dunblane, 
which he had chosen as the least lucrative. 

It was in April, 1662, that Bishop Leighton 
entered the seat of his diocess, and there he labored 
most assiduously. He thought, with St. Augustine, 
that a bishopric is not intended for pastime and 
amusement: ‘‘ Episcopatus non est artifictum transi- 
gende vite.” He therefore resided constantly on 
his see, and his holy ministrations watered the places 
about him with a blessing. Not content to repose 
in a lazy state, he regarded himself as a shepherd 
of souls, and went about from parish to parish, 
catechizing and preaching. But his primary aim 
was to heal the fountains; for he justly considered 
that if ministers were to become sound in doctrine, 
exemplary in personal conduct, and sedulous in 
pastoral duties, the fruits of their spirituality and 
zeal would quickly appear in the amended state of 


26 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


their parishes. He preached every Lord’s day ; 
consoled the sick and afllicted, instructed the igno- 
rant, and gave liberally to the poor. When any of 
the churches were vacant, he frequently supplied 
them himself; and visited all of them once a year. 
The majority of his clergy were both illiterate and 
careless ; but his timidity, and hope of their amend- 
ment by his own instruction and example, prevented 
him from deposing them ;—a sentence which he 
would also have found it difficult to execute, against 
the influence of their friends, and the temper of the 
other bishops. His deep concern that they might 
be wise and good, is evident from various charges 
which he gave them; and particularly from the 
first, delivered September, 1662, which has been 
published, and breathes a spirit of piety and peace. 
Among other excellent directions in that charge, 
the bishop urges the necessity of personal holiness 
and of a peaceable temper. He said, “that it was 
to be remembered, both by them and himself, to 
what eminent degrees of purity of heart and life 
their holy calling doth engage them ; to how great 
contempt of this present world, and inflamed affec- 
tions toward heaven, springing from deep persuasion 
within them of those things they preach to others, 
and from the daily meditation on them, and fervent 
prayer ;" and that we consider how ill it becomes us 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 27 


to be much in the trivial conversation of the world ; 
but, when our duty or necessity leads us into 
company, that our speech and deportment be ex- 
emplarily holy; that we be meek and gentle, 
endeavoring rather to quench than to increase the 
useless debates and contentions that abound in the 
world; and be always more studious of pacific 
than polemic divinity: the students of the former 
are called the sons of God.” 

At this time persecution raged in the southern 
and western parts of Scotland; but not one indi- 
vidual within the diocess of Dunblane, during 
Leighton’s occupation of that see, was violently 
molested for his religious principles: an exception 
which must be ascribed, in a great degree, to the 
mild temper and active influence of the bishop. To 
the Presbyterian ministers, particularly in his own 
diocess, he was always lenient. He held several 
conferences with them for the purpose of accom- 
modation, and occasionally heard them preach. 

It would be difficult to do justice to the sense 
Leighton entertained of the great responsibility of 
Christian ministers. For himself, (as his practice 
bears witness, ) he always desired the smallest cure ; 
partly from his humility, and partly from an appre- 
hension, so lively as to be almost terrible, of the 
account which must be given in by spiritual over- 


28 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


seers at the great tribunal. Often would he com- 
miserate those of the London clergy, the extent of 
whose cures made it impracticable to pay to each 
individual of their flock the attention that his soul 
required. ‘Were I again” he said in his last 
retirement, “to be a parish minister, I must follow 
sinners to their houses, and even to their ale-houses.” 
As one of the faults imputed to the Episcopal clergy 
was unskilfulness in preaching, he was solicitous to 
remove from his own diocess all color for this alle- 
gation. This he knew could never be effected until 
the pulpits were filled by holy men. “It is vain,” 
he would say, “for any one to speak of divine 
things without something of divine affections. An 
ungodly clergyman must feel weary when preach- 
ing godliness, and will hardly preach it persuasively. 
He has not been able to prevail on himself to be 
holy, and no marvel if he fail of prevailing upon 
others. In truth, he is in great danger of becoming 
hardened against religion by the frequent inculcation 
of it, if it fail of melting him.” 

The following extract from a letter, in which he 
offers a living to one of his clergy, affords a beau- 
tiful specimen of Christian politeness, at the same 
time that it lets us into the bishop’s sense of the 
temper and affection with which a charge of souls 
should be undertaken. 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 29 


“ Sir, 

“‘ There is one place indeed in my precinct now 
vacant, and yet undisposed of, by the voluntary re- 
moval of the young man who was in it to a better 
benifice ; and this is likewise in my hand, but it is 
of so wretchedly mean provision that I am ashamed 
to name it—little, I think, above five hundred marks 
(less than £30 sterling) a year. Ifthe many in- 
stances of that kind you have read, have made you 
in love with voluntary poverty, there you may have 
it; but wheresoever you are or shall be for the lit- 
tle rest of your time, I hope you are, and still will 
be, daily advancing in the blest poverty of spirit 
that is the only true height and greatness of spirit in 
all the world entitling to a crown: ‘ for theirs is the 
kingdom of heaven.’ Oh! what are all the scraps 
that the great ones of this world are scrambling for, 
compared with that pretension? I pray you, as you 
find an opportunity, though possibly little or no 
inclination to it, yet bestow one line or two upon 

“Your poor friend and servant, 


Co re 
The following letter to the heritors* of the parish 
of Stratton, places in a clear light the upright, yet 


* The heritors of a parish are the owners of the real pro- 
perty (lands, houses, etc.) within it. 


30 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


sagacious policy, by which Leighton managed to 
fill the vacant benifices with pious men, and to con- 
ciliate the good-will of the parishioners to their new 
pastors. 


“ Wortuy GENTLEMEN AND FRIEnps, 


“Being informed that it is my duty to present a 
person fit for the charge of the ministry now vacant 
with you, I have thought of one whose integrity and 
piety I am so fully persuaded of, that I dare confi- 
dently recommend him to you as one who, if the 
hand of God do bind that work upon him amongst 
you, is likely, through the blessing of the same 
hand, to be very serviceable to the building up of 
your souls heavenward ; but is as far from suffering 
himself to be obtruded, as I am from obtruding any 
upon you: so that unless you invite him to preach, 
and, after hearing him, declare your consent and 
desire toward his embracing of the call, you may 
be secure from the trouble of hearing any further 
concerning him, either from himself or me; and if 
you please to let me know your mind, your rea- 
sonable satisfaction shall be, to my utmost power, 
endeavored by 

“Your affectionate friend, R. L.” 


In the charges which this venerable prelate de- 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 3l 


livered to his clergy, they were directed to read 
portions of the Old and New Testaments, as an im- 
portant part of the service. It was also his wish 
that the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostle’s Creed, and the 
Doxology, should be restored to more frequent use ; 
that a weekly day should be appointed for catechiz- 
ing, and that an easy compendium of Christian doc- 
trine should be agreed upon by his clergy, to be 
made the basis of catechetical instructions to the 
young and the ignorant. Probably the short cate- 
chism, which is among his printed works, was com- 
posed for this purpose. The sermons of that pe- 
riod generally ran in a high strain of controversy. 
Against this the bishop set his face, and he labored 
to bring into the place of subtle and passionate dis- 
putations a modest and sober style of preaching, 
that should be level to the capacities, and calculated 
to amend the morals of the community. On the ig- 
norance and viciousness of the people in general he 
touches sorrowfully, and he warns his clergy against 
slackness and timidity in reproving the prevalent 
sins of their respective parishes. Large portions of 
Holy Scripture were preferred by him as subjects 
for sermons to single texts, for he thought they 
offered more scope for pithy practical remark, and 
were better calculated to lay hold on the attention 
of the auditory. 


32 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


Though friendly to a grave and masculine elo- 
quence, of which he was himself no common mas- 
ter, yet his chief desire was that discourses from 
the pulpit should be simple and clear. After hear- 
ing a plain, homely sermon, he expressed the high- 
est satisfaction; “for the good man,” said he in 
reference to the preacher, “seems in earnest to 
catch souls.” “The measure of speech,” he 
remarked, (and it is an observation well worthy of 
being preserved,) “ought to be the character of the- 
audience, which is made up, for the most part, of 
illiterate persons.” 

Any deliberate opinion of this great man must 
deserve respect, even when it may not command ac- 
quiescence. It would, therefore, be wrong to omit 
mentioning, that he disliked the practice of reading 
sermons ; being of opinion that it detracted much 
from the weight and authority of preaching. “I 
know (he said) that weakness of the memory is 
pleaded in excuse for this custom; but better minds 
would make better memories. Such an excuse is 
unworthy of a man, and much more of a father, 
who may want vent indeed in addressing his chil- 
dren, but ought never to want matter. Like Elihu, 
he should be refreshed by speaking.” 

Although disposed to lenity, he was not regard- 
less of discipline. Gross offences committed in his 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 33 


diocess were to be branded with church censures ; 
and the restoration of offenders to the communion of 
the church was to be delayed till indubious symp- 
toms of repentance had shown themselves. 

It was among his pious plans to bring about a 
more frequent celebration of the Lord’s Supper, 
which in those days was not in every place so much 
as an annual ceremony: he wished the people to be 
carefully instructed in the spiritual import of this 
holy rite, and to be frequently exhorted to maintain 
a constant fitness for it. He also made it incum- 
bent on his clergy to promote the practice of family 
worship, and to exercise a watchful superintendence 
over their flocks, bearing the spiritual burdens of 
every member, and dealing out to each, as his case 
may require, instruction, or counsel, or reproof, or 
consolation. 

It has been already stated how careful he was to 
remind his clergy that no substantial good could be 
expected from their ministrations, unless they were 
themselves remarkable for sanctity of heart and 
life ; men of prayer, of study, and meditation; of 
“ great contempt of this present world, and inflamed 
affections toward heaven ;”? whose pure and peace- 
able demeanor, full of mercy and good fruits, should 
stamp them for the sons of God, and servants of the 


meek and lowly Jesus. 
Arch. Leigh. 


ws 


34 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


Having these things much at heart, he gave ina 
paper at the synod of 1667, in which, after a most 
conciliatory introduction, and blaming himself for 
having, through averseness to lord it over Christ’s 
heritage, been more backward to advise them than 
perhaps his situation demanded, he proceeds to urge 
the importance of adding life and efficacy to those 
“ privy trials,” in which the presbyters used to ex- 
amine each other for mutual correction and edifica- 
tion. ‘This process, he is satisfied, might be made 
exceedingly salutary to those who were declining 
in zeal and diligence, were entangled in doctrinal 
errors, or were in any way swerving from the path 
of ministerial duty; provided they were so con- 
ducted as to constrain a man to serious reflection 
upon himself; and with a view to their being 
rendered thus useful, he lays down some admi- 
rable rules, which are included in the body of his 
works. 

This holy man was as remote as possible from an 
imperious and domineering exercise of his autho- 
rity. Instead of exacting submission from his clergy 
by peremptoriness and menaces, he industriously 
waved his authority as a bishop, and bespoke their 
obedience by urbanity and gentleness. The only 
superiority he sought was in labor; the only ascen- 
dency he coveted was in self-denial and holiness ; 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 35 


and in these respects he had few competitors for 
preéminence. 

Proceeding steadily upon these principles, and 
exerting all his influence to impart to others the 
same fervency of spirit, he drew upon himself the 
eyes of all Scotland, which gazed with amaze- 
ment at his bright and singular virtues, as at a 
star of unrivalled brilliance newly added to the 
sky. 

But the violent efforts which were employed to 
promote the plans of King Charles II. in Scotland, 
led to much discontent and numerous evils. Leigh- 
ton’s spirit was deeply grieved in witnessing the 
commotions of his country. He would say, “I have 
met with many cunning plotters, but with few 
honest and skilful undertakers. Many have I seen 
who were wise and great as to this world; but of 
such as were willing to be weak that others may be 
strong, and whose only aim it is to promote the pros- 
perity of Zion, I have not found one in ten thousand.” 

Having made these afflicting discoveries, and find- 
ing all his efforts to put things in a better train quite 
ineffectual, Leighton thought that he should be jus- 
tified in laying down the charge which he had taken 
up, not as a dignity, but as a cross and a burden. 
He resolved, however, to go up to London in the 
first instance, and to lay before the royal eye, which 


36 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


had hitherto been deluded with fallacious repre- 
sentations, a faithful picture of the distempered and 
convulsed state of Scotland. Having obtained an 
interview with the king, he declared that the severi- 
ties practised upon objectors to the new establish- 
ment were such as his conscience could not justify, 
even for the sake of planting Christianity in a hea- 
then land; and much less could he agree to them 
for an end so comparatively insignificant as that of 
substituting one form of ecclesiastical government 
for another. He therefore besought permission to 
resign his bishopric, lest by retaining it he should 
seem to be a party to violences at which his prin- 
ciples and feelings revolted. His majesty professed 
disapprobation of the manner in which the affairs of 
the church were administered by Sharp, and seemed 
touched by the pathetic arguments of the virtuous 
advocate of toleration. He pledged himself to stop 
that application of the secular sword against which 
Leighton protested, and he actually annulled the 
ecclesiastical commission which endeavored to goad 
dissenters into conformity by fines, and jails, and 
corporal punishments. But he would not hear of 
Leighton’s vacating his see; and the bishop con- 
sented at length to retain it, as he could not be 
ignorant that, by persisting in his purpose of re- 
tirement, he would throw away every chance of 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 37 


holding the king to those engagements into which 
he had just been impelled. 

Leighton had so fully made up his mind to with- 
draw at this time from his station, that he had taken 
a solemn farewell of his clergy before his departure 
for London. After winding up the regular business 
of the synod, in October, 1665, he informed them that 
there was a matter, of which he thought it his duty 
to notify them. He then announced his intention 
of retiring ; and the reasons he assigned for it were, 
the sense he entertained of his own unworthiness to 
sustain so high an office, and his weariness of those 
contentions which had clothed the household of God 
in mourning, and seemed to be rather increasing 
than abating. “For myself,” he said, “ brethren, 
| have to thank you for the undeserved respect and 
kindness which I have all along experienced at your 
hands. Let me entreat your good construction of 
the poor endeavors I have used to serve you, and to 
assist you in promoting the work of the ministry, 
and the great designs of the Gospel. If in anything, 
whether by word or deed, I have given you offence, 
or unnecessarily pained a single individual among 
you, I do earnestly and humbly crave forgiveness. 
My last advice to you is, that you continue in the 
study of peace and holiness, and grow and abound 
in love to our great Lord and Master, and to the 


38 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


souls for which he died. Finally, brethren, fare- 
well: be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, 
live in peace, and the God of peace and love shall 
be with you. Amen.” 

In the year 1667, Leighton was again forced from 
his beloved retirement, to plead the cause of an op- 
pressed and injured people. He went to London a 
second time, and remonstrated earnestly with the 
king against the oppressive measures still pursued. 
He had two audiences with King Charles, and repre- 
sented, in strong but respectful language, the injus- 
tice and cruelty with which affairs were adminis- 
tered in Scotland. It was then that the good bishop 
took the liberty of proposing to the king, and even 
urging, that the Presbyterians should be treated with 
moderation and lenity. King Charles, as usual, 
gave him fair speeches and promises; but nothing 
effectual was done. Leighton returned to his dio- 
cess with a heavy heart, and labored in word and 
doctrine, preaching and catechizing throughout his 
diocess :—a burning and a shining light, in the midst 
of discord and contention, violence and war, all 
around. Meanwhile, his peaceful endeavors to 
soften the opposite parties were unremitting, but 
without success. 

In the year 1670, without his solicitation, and 
against his will, he was appointed to the archbish- 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 39 


opric of Glasgow ; though he did not take possession 
of that see for twelve months after the appointment. 
He was strongly urged by the ruling men to accept 
of it, yet hesitated long. They knew that he was 
the only man qualified to allay the discontents which 
prevailed in the west of Scotland; and even the 
king ordered him to come up to court, for the pur- 
pose of overcoming his scruples. Knowing that 
Leighton had formed a scheme of accommodation 
between the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, which 
‘was for years the object of his desires and the sub- 
ject of his study, Charles examined it, expressed his 
approbation, and promised assistance in carrying it 
into effect. This was the motive which induced 
him to accept of the archbishopric of Glasgow. ‘The 
scheme itself was marked by moderation. Leigh- 
ton wished each of the parties, for the sake of peace, 
to abate somewhat of their opinions respectively, as 
to the mode of government and worship: nor did he 
conceive that truth would suffer by their union, but 
rather that the great ends of Christianity would be 
promoted. But various things rendered the scheme 
abortive. Both parties were too much exasperated, 
and too jealous of each other, to yield a single point. 
There is sufficient ground likewise to think that the 
king sent secret instructions to counteract the whole 
of Leighton’s plan. In short, though the scheme 


40 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


did much honor to his liberal and pacifie heart, it 
came to nothing. The Archbishop of Glasgow, how- 
ever, did all in his power to reform the clergy, to 
correct wickedness and promote piety among the 
people, to suppress violence, and to soothe the minds 
of the Presbyterians. At Glasgow, Paisley, and 
Edinburgh, he held conferences with them on their 
principles, and on his scheme of accommodation, but 
without effect. The parties could not be brought 
to mutual indulgence, and far less to religious con- 
cord. ‘The experience of Episcopacy, during the 
two preceding reigns, was calculated to create dis- 
gust and aversion. It had been introduced, and 
was still continued, by military foree. Besides, the 
Presbyterians knew that Leighton was the only 
bishop, and almost the only man, in church or in 
state, who was cordial and zealous in making the 
proposal. 

Leighton preached to the clergy of Glasgow, and 
in several discourses, both in public and private, he 
exhorted them to look up more to God, to consider 
themselves as the ministers of the cross of Christ, to 
bear the contempt and ill-usage they met with, as a 
cross laid on them for the exercise of their faith and 
patience, to lay aside all the appetites of revenge, 
to humble themselves before God, to have many 
days for secret fasting and prayer, and to meet 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 4l 


often together that they might quicken and assist one 
another in those holy exercises, and then they might 
expect blessings from heaven upon their labors. 

Leighton made various attempts at reconciliation ; 
but, undermined and opposed by his own party for 
his blameless life and lenient principles and temper, 
and suspected by some of the other party through 
his gentleness, he felt his situation to be irksome 
and intolerable. Burdened above measure, he looked 
back to Dunblane with fond regret, and did not 
cease affectionately and solemnly to admonish the 
clergy of that diocess; as appears from the follow- 
ing letter to the synod of Dunblane. 


“ Giascow, April 6, 1671. 
“REVEREND BRETHREN, 


“The superadded burden that I have here, sits so 
heavy upon me, that I cannot escape from under it, 
to be with you at this time; but my heart and de- 
sires shall be with you, for a blessing from above 
upon your meeting. I have nothing to recommend 
to you, but (if you please) to take a review of things 
formerly agreed upon, and such as you judge most 
useful ; to renew the appointment of putting them in 
practice ; and to add whatsoever further shall occur 
to your thoughts, that may promote the happy dis- 
charge of your ministry, and the good of your pco- 


42 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


ple’s souls. I know I need not remind you, for I 
am confident you daily think of it, that the great 
principle of fidelity and diligence, and good success, 
in that great work, is love; and the great spring of 
love to souls, is to love Him that bought them. He 
knew it well himself, and gave us to know it, when 
he said, Simon, lovest thou me? Feed my sheep, 
feed my lambs. Deep impression of his blessed name 
upon our hearts, will not fail to produce lively ex- 
pression of it, not only in our words and discourses, 
in private and public, but will make the whole track 
of our lives to be a true copy and transcript of his 
holy life: and, if there be within us any sparks of 
that divine love, you know the best way not only to 
preserve them, but to excite them and blow them up 
into a flame, is by the breath of prayer. Oh prayer! 
the converse of the soul with God, the breath of God in 
man returning to its original; frequent, and fervent 
prayer, the better half of our whole work, and that 
which makes the other half lively and effectual: as 
that holy company tells us, when, appointing deacons 
to serve the tables, they add, But we will give ourselves 
continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word. 
And is it not, brethren, our unspeakable advantage, 
beyond all the gainful and honorable employments 
of the world, that the whole work of our particular 
calling is a kind of living in heaven; and besides 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 43 


its tendency to the saving of the souls of others, is 
all along so proper and adapted to the purifying and 
saving of our own? But you will possibly say, 
What does he himself do that speaks these things 
unto us? Alas! I am ashamed to tell you. All I 
dare say is this: I think I see the beauty of holiness, 
and am enamored with it, though I attain it not; 
and how little soever I attain, would rather live and 
die in the pursuit of it, than in the pursuit, yea, or 
in the possession and enjoyment, though unpursued, 
of all the advantages that this world affords. And 
I trust, dear brethren, you are of the same opinion, 
and have the same desire and design, and follow it 
both more diligently, and with better success. But 
I will stop here, lest I should forget myself, and 
possibly run on till I have wearied you, if I have 
not done that already; and yet if it be so,1 will 
hope for easy pardon at your hands, as of a fault 
[ have not been accustomed to heretofore, nor am 
likely hereafter often to commit. To the all-pow- 
erful grace of our great Lord and Master, I recom- 
mend you, and your flocks, and your whole work 
amongst them; and do earnestly entreat your 
prayers for 
“Your unworthiest, but most affectionate, 
«“ Brother and servant, 
“ R. LeicHTon.” 


44 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


At length, when Leighton found that all his efforts 
to unite the different parties were vain, he deter- 
mined to resign. All these crosses and disappoint- 
ments were regarded by him, as so many provi- 
dential intimations to relinquish an employment, 
wherein he seemed to be doing little service to the 
church, while sacrificing his personal comfort. 
Anguish was drinking up his spirit, without benefit 
to the cause of religion. Accordingly, he rigor- 
ously canvassed the legality of abdicating his office: 
he found out several instances of bishops who had 
taken that step, and gone into retirement; and at 
length he fully satisfied himself that the law of God 
did not require him to retain his bishopric, when 
the business of it was but to consume its revenues 
in stately indolence. On scrutinizing his own 
heart, he could not perceive that he was prompted 
to this measure by successive disgusts, by impa- 
tience of the cross, by wounded pride, by secret 
indignation at Providence, or by his natural pro- 
pensity to a quiet, studious, and contemplative pri- 
vacy. Was it not a duty, rather than a fault, to 
renounce a position of anxious dignity, and barren 
of usefulness, for one more favorable to prayer and 
meditation, to communion with God, and to pre- 
paration for eternity? He was now growing old 
and infirm, and had need to respire from over- 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 45 


whelming fatigues. He considered that the dress- 
ing and undressing of his soul, as he used to call 
devotional exercises, was the business to which his 
few remaining days ought to be consecrated, and 
he “longed to escape, if only into the air among the 
birds,” from the ungrateful service which he had 
not declined when summoned to it by a sense of 
duty ; but from which he held himself discharged, 
now that it was become evident that no good could 
issue from his remaining in it. 

We can hardly doubt that Leighton had been 
long looking out for the moment, when he might 
indulge, without violence to his conscience, his 
disposition to seclusion from the world. 

The following extract of a letter to his sister, 
Mrs. Lightmaker, shows the state of his feelings : 
“ Our joint business is to die daily to this world 
and self, that what little remains of our life, we may 
live to Him that died for us. For myself, to what 
purpose is it that I tell you that I grow old and 
sickly ; and though I have here great retirement, 
yet I am still panting after a retreat from this place 
and all public charge, and next to rest in the grave. 
It is the most pressing desire I have of anything in 
the world ; and, if it might be, near you. But our 
heavenly Father, we quietly resigning all to Him, 
both knows and will do what is best.” 


46 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


This letter is dated from Dunblane, where he 
seems mostly to have resided, after his efforts for 
accommodation came to nothing. In this retreat, 
to which he was very partial, there is said to be 
still in existence a shady avenue, called “The 
Bishop’s Walk ;” a name which it took from the 
practice of the venerable Leighton to pace up and 
down it, when he wished to join bodily exercise 
with spiritual meditation. 

In April, 1673, he addressed the following letter 
to the Synod of Glasgow, which he met for the last 
time on the eighth day of the following December. 


“ REVEREND BRETHREN, 

“Tt is neither a matter of much importance, nor 
can I yet give you a particular and satisfying 
account of the reasons of my absence from your 
meeting, which I trust, with the help of a little time, 
will clear itself; but I can assure you, I am at 
present with you in my most affectionate wishes of 
the gracious presence of that Holy Spirit amongst 
you and within you all, who alone can make this 
and all your meetings, and the whole work of your 
ministry, happy and successful to the good of souls, 
and his glory that bought them with his own blood. 
And I doubt not that your own great desire, each 
for himself, and all for one another, is the same; 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 47 


and that your daily and great employment is, by 
incessant and fervent prayer, to draw down from 
above large supplies and increase of that blessed 
Spirit, which our Lord and Master hath assured us 
that our heavenly Father will not fail to give to them 
that ask it. And how extreme a negligence and 
folly were it to want so rich a gift for want of ask- 
ing ; especially in those devoted to so high and 
holy a service, that requires so great degrees of that 
spirit of holiness and Divine love to purify their 
minds, and to raise them above their senses and this 
present world! Oh, my dear brethren! what are 
we doing, that suffer our souls to creep and grovel 
on this earth, and do so little aspire to the heavenly 
life of Christians, and more eminently of the mes- 
sengers and ministers of God, as stars, yea, as 
angels, which he hath made spirits, and his minis- 
ters a flame of fire! Oh! where are souls to be 
found among us that represent their own original, 
that are possessed with pure and sublime apprehen- 
sions of God, the Father of spirits, and are often 
raised to the astonishing contemplation of his eter- 
nal and blessed being, and his infinite holiness, and 
greatness, and goodness, and are accordingly burnt 
up with ardent love! And where that holy fire is 
wanting there can be no sacrifice, whatsoever our 
invention, or utterance, or gifts may be, and how 


48 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


blameless soever the externals of our life may be, 
and even our hearts free from gross pollutions ; for 
it is scarcely to be suspected that any of us will 
suffer any of those strange, yea, infernal fires of 
ambition, or avarice, or malice, or impure lusts, or 
sensualities, to burn within us, which would render 
us priests of idols, of airy nothings, and of dunghill 
gods—yea, of the very god of this world, the prince 
of darkness. Let men judge us and revile us as 
they please, that imports nothing at all; but God 
forbid anything should possess our hearts but He 
that loved us, and gave himself for us; for we 
know we cannot be vessels of honor meet for the 
master’s use, unless we purge ourselves from all 
filthiness of flesh and spirit, and empty ourselves of 
all things beside him, and even of ourselves, and of 
our own will, and have no more any desires nor 
delights but his will alone, and his glory, who is 
our peace, and our life, and our all. And truly I 
think it were our best and wisest reflection upon the 
many difficulties and discouragements without us, 
to be driven by them to live more within, as they 
observe of the bees; that when it is foul weather 
abroad they are busy in their hives. If the power 
of external discipline be enervated in our hands, 
yet who can forbid us to try and judge, and cen- 
sure ourselves, and to purge the inner temples, our 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 49 


own hearts, with the more severity and exactness. 
And if we be dashed and bespattered with re- 
proaches abroad, to study to be the cleaner at 
home; and the less we find of meekness and 
charity in the world about us, to preserve so much 
the more of that sweet temper within our own 
hearts, blessing them that curse us, and praying for 
them that persecute us; so shall we most effect- 
ually prove ourselves to be the children of our 
heavenly Father, even to their conviction that will 
scarcely allow us in any sense to be called his 
servants. 

“« As for the confusions and contentions that still 
abound and increase in the church, and threaten to 
undo it, I think our wisdom will be to cease from 
man, and look for no help till we look more upward ; 
and dispute and discourse less, and fast and pray 
more, and so draw down our relief from the God of 
order and peace, who made the heavens and the earth. 

“Concerning myself I have nothing to say, but 
humbly to entreat you to pass by the many failings 
and weaknesses you may have perceived in me 
during my abode with you; and if in anything I 
have injured or offended you, or any of you, in the 
management of my public charge, or in private 
converse, I do sincerely beg your pardon ; though 


I cannot make any requital in that kind, for I do 
Arch. Leigh. . ; 


50 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


not know of anything toward me from any of you 
that needs a pardon in the least, you having gener- 
ally paid me more kindness and respect than a much 
better or wiser man could either have expected or 
deserved. Nor am I only a suitor for your pardon, 
but for the addition of a further charity, and that so 
great a one that I have nothing to plead for it but 
that I need it much—your prayers. And I am 
hopeful, as to that, to make you some little, though 
very disproportionate, return; for whatsoever be- 
comes of me, (through the help of God,) while I 
live you shall be no one day of my life forgotten by 

“Your most unworthy, but most affectionate, 

‘“‘ Brother and servant, 
“R, LeicHton.” 

«P. S. I do not see whom it can offend, or how 
any can disapprove of it, if you will appoint a fast 
throughout your bounds, and entreat a blessing on 
the seed committed to the ground, and for the other 
grave causes that are still the same as they were 
the last year, and the urgency of them no whit 
abated, but rather increased ; but in this I prescribe 
nothing, but leave it to your discretion and the di- 
rection of God.” 


In the summer of 1673, the archbishop again 
went to London, to proffer his resignation to the 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 51 


king. The king, however, still refused to accept it ; 
but gave a written engagement to allow him te 
retire after the trial of another year. The follow 
ing is a copy of the king’s engagement. 


‘Cartes R. 

“Tt is our will and pleasure that the present 
Archbishop of Glasgow do continue in that station 
for one whole year ; and we shall allow liberty to 
him to retire from thence at the end of that time. 

“Given at our Court, at Whitehall, the 9th day 
of August, 1673 ; and of our reign, the 25th year. 
By his Majesty’s command.” 


On this assurance Archbishop Leighton returned 
to Glasgow, and fulfilled the period of the engage- 
ment: it was a long year indeed to him. He often 
said that there was now only one painful stage be- 
tween him and rest, and he would wrestle through 
it the best he could. His determination to resign 
was now firmly fixed, and when the period elapsed, 
he went to London and resigned his charge. The 
resignation was, according to promise, accepted, to 
the relief and joy of his heart. 

The following are the reasons he assigned for 
resigning : 

“Whatever others may judge, they that know 


52 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


what passed before my engaging in this charge, 
will not, I believe, impute my retreat from it to 
levity or unfixedness of mind, considering how often 
I declared beforehand, both by word and writing, 
the great suspicions I had that my continuance in 
it would be very short ; neither is it from any sud- 
den passion, or sullen discontent, that | have now 
resigned it, nor do I know any cause imaginable for 
any such thing ; but the true reasons of my retir- 
ing are plainly and briefly these. 

I. The sense I have of the dreadful weight of 
whatsoever charge of souls, and all kind of spiritual 
inspection over all people, but much more over 
ministers ; and withal, of my own extreme unwor- 
thiness and unfitness for so high a station in the 
church; and there is an episcopal act that is above all 
others formidable to me—the ordaining of ministers. 

IJ. The continuing and daily increasing divis- 
ions and contentions, and many other disorders of 
this church, and the little or no appearance of their 
cure for our time ; and as little hope amidst these 
contentions and disorders of doing anything in this 
station to promote the great design of religion in the 
hearts and lives of men, which were the only reason 
of continuing in it, though it were with much pains 
and reluctance. 


Il]. The earnest desire I have long had of a 


LIFE OF AECHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 53 


retired and private life, which is now much in- 
creased by sickliness and old age drawing on, and 
the sufficient experience I have of the folly and 
vanity of the world. 

“To add any further discourse, a large apology in 
this matter, were to no purpose, but instead of re- 
moving other mistakes and misconstructions, would 
be apt to expose me to one more ; for it would look 
like too much valuing either of myself, or of the 
world’s opinion, both which I think I have too much 
reason to depise.” 


CHAPTER IIl. 


FROM HIS RESIGNING THE CHARGE OF ARCHBISHOP TO HIS DEATH. 
HIS CHARACTER AND CORRESPONDENCE. 

WE have already mentioned that Bishop Leigh- 
ton’s sister was married to a gentleman of fortune 
and character, Edward Lightmaker, Esq., of Broad- 
hurst, in Sussex. Mrs. Lightmaker was now a 
widow, and lived with her son, in the family man- 
sion. Thither Leighton was invited to retire, and 
spend the remainder of his days. His sister’s spirit 
was congenial with his own; and young Lightma- 
ker was a most dutiful son and respectful nephew. 
Our author saw a retreat from care and trouble 


54 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


provided for him by a kind Providence, and entered 
it with a grateful and disburdened soul. 

Of the habits and employments of this man of 
God, during the sequel of his life, there remain but 
few particulars. Some interesting notices, how- 
ever, of his general conversation, which are mostly 
gleaned from his nephew’s letter to the Bishop of 
Salisbury, the pen of biography will not be em- 
ployed amiss in recording. 

We have seen that it was his purpose, in divor- 
cing himself from the world, to give up the remnant 
of his days to secret and tranquil devotion. Having 
spent his prime in the active duties of his profession, 
and in the service of his fellow creatures, he saw no 
impropriety, but rather a suitableness, in consecra- 
ting his declining years more immediately to God ; 
and in making the last stage of earthly existence a 
season of unintermitted preparation for the scene, 
upon which he was to enter at the end of his jour- 
ney. Accordingly, he lived in great seclusion ; 
and abstained, to the utmost that charity and cour- 
tesy would allow, from giving and receiving visits. 
Let it not be supposed, however, that he withdrew 
from ministerial employments. After disburdening 
himself of the episcopal dignity, he again took to 
the vocation of a parish minister, and was constantly 
engaged at Horsted Keynes, or one of the neighbor- 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 5D 


ing churches, in reading prayers or in preaching. 
In the peasant’s cottage, likewise, 


“ 
7 


his tongue dropped manna :” 

and long after his decease he was talked of by the 
poor of his village with affectionate reverence. 
With deep feeling would they recall his divine 
counsels and consolations ; his tenderness in private 
converse ; and the impressive sanctity which he 
carried into the solemnities of public worship. 

Leighton was not by nature morose and ascetic ; 
yet something of a cloisteral complexion appears to 
have been wrought in him by the character of the 
times, and by the scarcity of men like-minded with 
himself. He plunged into the solitudes of devotion, 
with a view to escape from the polluting commerce 
of the world ; to gain the highest places of sacred 
contemplation, and to maintain perpetual intercourse 
with heaven. 

“Tt is not”’ he would say, “ the want of religious 
houses, but of spiritual hearts, that glues the wing 
of our affections, and hinders the more frequent 
practice of this leading precept of the divine law— 
fervently to lift up our souls unto God, and to have 
our conversation in heaven.” MHis opinion was 
that a mixed life, or, as he beautifully termed it, an 
angelic life, was the most excellent—a life spent 
between ascending to fetch blessings from above, 


56 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


and descending to scatter them among mortals. 
Would Christians retreat occasionally from the dizzy 
whirl and tumult of life, and give themselves time 
to think, they might become enamored of those 
beauties which lie above the natural ken on the sum- 
mit of God’s holy mountain. Some of the fathers 
of the first ages had, according to his notions, hit 
the happy medium ; and, by mingling pastoral min- 
istrations with devotional retirement, had earned a 
better meed than is due to the votaries of a severe 
and unprofitable solitude. 

After spending five years in this manner, without 
any remarkable interruption of his solitude, his 
fears were much alarmed by an unexpected and 
private letter from the king’s own hand. It was 
written as follows. 


Winosor, July 16, 1679. 


“ My Lorp—I am resolved to try what clemency 
can prevail upon such in Scotland as will not con- 
form to the government of the church there ; for 
effecting which design I desire that you may go 
down to Scotland with your first conveniency, and 
take all possible pains for persuading all you can 
of both opinions to as much mutual correspondence 
and concord as can be; and send me, from time to 
time, characters both of men and things. In order 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 57 


to this design, I shall send a precept for two hun- 
dred pounds sterling upon my Exchequer, till you 
resolve how to serve me in a stated employment. 
“ Your loving friend, 
“CHartes R.” 
Addressed thus, 
“For the Bishop of Dunblane.” 


It would appear, from this address, that Leigh- 
ton, after resigning the dignity of Archbishop of 
Glasgow, resumed that of the Bishop of Dunblane. 
Or, perhaps, he simply retained the title, without 
the office. The matter referred to in the above 
letter being managed secretly between the king and 
Leighton, we know not how he got himself excused 
from complying with the royal order. But certain 
it is, that he never again visited Scotland, or inter- 
meddled with ecclesiastical affairs. He continued 
in his beloved retirement about ten years, edifying 
all around him by occasional advice, and by his con- 
stant example, waiting for the time of his departure. 

In the year 1684, Leighton was earnestly request- 
ed by Burnet to go up to London, and to visit Lord 
Perth, who had begun to feel compunction for his 
lamentable departure from the paths of virtue, and 
had expressed an earnest desire to have the benefit 
of Leighton’s counsel. ‘The hope of reclaiming 


58 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


that unhappy nobleman prevailed over personal 
considerations, and he went up to London accord- 
ingly, healthy in appearance, but with feelings of 
illness, which may account for his presentiment 
that his dissolution was at hand. “ The worse I 
” said he, in the fulness of his self-denying 
benevolence, “ the more I choose to go, that I may 
give one pull at your poor brother, and snatch him, 
if possible, from the infectious air of the court.” 


am, 


Burnet had not seen him for a considerable time 
before, and was astonished at the freshness and 
vigor which appeared in him, notwithstanding his 
advanced age. His hair was still black, his mo- 
tions were lively, and his devotion shone forth with 
the same lustre and vivacity asever. On his friend’s 
expressing great pleasure at seeing him look so 
hearty, Leighton observed that, for all that, he was 
very near his end, and his work and journey were 
now both almost done. This answer made little 
impression on Burnet at the time; but his mind 
reverted to it after the event of three more days had 
stamped it with a prophetic emphasis. 

The very next day he was attacked with an 
oppression on the chest, and with cold, and stitches, 
which proved to be the commencement of a pleurisy. 
He sunk rapidly, for on the following day both 
speech and sense had left him; and after panting for 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 59 


about twelve hours, he expired, without a struggle, 
in the arms of Bishop Burnet, his intimate friend— 
his ardent and affectionate admirer. 

Nothing is recorded of his last hours; and, 
indeed, the disease that carried him off was, in its 
nature and rapid progress, such as to preclude 
much speaking. But no record is necessary of the 
dying moments of a man who had served God from 
his youth, and whose path had been a shining light 
up to the moment when the shades of death closed 
over it. God was assuredly the strength of his 
heart in the hour of his last agony, and is now his 
glorious portion—his exceeding and eternal great 
reward. 

It was needless for himself, that he should have 
notice of the bridegroom’s coming ; for his lamp was 
always trimmed, and his loins were always girded. 
To his surviving friends it could have afforded little 
additional satisfaction, to have heard him express, 
on his death-bed, that faith and holy hope, of which 
his life had been one unbroken example: neither 
could he have left, for the benefit of posterity, any 
sayings more suitable to a dying believer than 
those he daily uttered ; living, as he had long lived, 
on the confines of the eternal world, and in the 
highest frame of spirituality that it seems possible 
for an imbodied soul to attain. He entered into his 


60 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


rest, on the 25th of June, A. D. 1684, in the 
seventy-fourth year of his age. 

One remarkable circumstance accompanied the 
death of this great and good man. Though he had 
courted retirement all his life long, and had enjoyed 
it almost without interruption at Broadhurst for ten 
years, he was unexpectedly brought to London to 
see his esteemed friends once more, and to edify 
them by the closing scene. Leighton, too, as him- 
self probably thought, received a strong hint in the 
course of Providence a short time before his death, 
that he must soon depart. As he never pressed the 
payment of his revenue, if it may be called by that 
name, considerable arrears were owing to him in 
Scotland. These were left in trust with a friend, 
who made small and slow remittances; and the 
very last remittance which could be expected, was 
sent a few weeks before our author’s decease ; 
“so that’’ (to adopt Bishop Burhet’s happy phrase) 
“his provision and journey failed him both at once.” 
But, the most remarkable circumstance of all was, 
that God granted a singular wish which Leighton 
often expressed. He was in the habit of expressing 
a desire, with submission to the will of Heaven, that 
he might die from home, and at an inn. He con- 
sidered such a place as suitable to the character of 
the Christian pilgrim, to whom the world is an inn, 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 61 


a place of accommodation by the way, not his 
home ; and that the spiritual sojourner steps with 
propriety from an inn to his Father’s house. Leigh- 
ton thought, also, that the care and concern of 
friends were apt to entangle and discompose the 
dying saint ; and that the unfeeling attendance of 
strangers weaned the heart from the world, and 
smoothed the passage to heaven. Our author ob- 
tained his wish; for he died at the Bell inn, in 
Warwick Lane; and none of his near relations 
were present during his last illness. If he had not 
the consolation to see his nearest relation, a beloved 
sister, yet the feelings of both were spared the 
agony of a final adieu. 

His remains were conveyed to Horsted Keynes, 
the parish in which he had spent his concluding 
years, and were interred in an ancient chancel of 
the church. A simple epitaph marks his tomb. 

The following are the testimonies of Bishop Bur- 
net to the character of Leighton. 

“JT bear still a greater veneration for the memory 
of that man than I do for any other, and reckon my 
early knowledge of him, and my long and intimate 
conversation with him, that continued to his death, 
for twenty-three years, among the greatest bless- 
ings of my life, and for which I must give account 
to God in the great day in a most particular man- 


62 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


Her: 


Again, he describes him as “a bishop that 
had the greatest elevation of soul, the largest com- 
pass of knowledge, the most mortified and most hea- 
venly disposition that I ever yet saw in any mortal ; 
he had the greatest parts as well as virtues, with the 
perfectest humility that I ever saw in man, and had 
a sublime strain of preaching, with so grave a ges- 
ture, and such a majesty both of thought and of 
language, and of pronunciation, that I never once 
saw a wandering eye where he preached; and I 
have seen whole assemblies often melt in tears be- 
fore him; and of him I can say, with great truth, 
that, in a free and frequent conversation with him 
for above two-and-twenty years, I never knew him 
say an idle word, or one that had not a direct ten- 
dency to edification ; and I never once saw him in 
any other temper but that which I would wish to 
be in in the last moments of my life. For that pat- 
tern which I saw in him, and for that conversation 
which I had with him, I know how much I have to 
answer to God; and, though my reflecting on that 
which I knew in him gives me just cause of being 
humbled in myself and before God, yet I feel no 
more sensible pleasure in anything, than in going 
over in my thoughts all I saw and observed in him.” 

Having mentioned these circumstances of his 
removal, we may briefly describe the person of this 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 63 


extraordinary man. Leighton was about the mid- 
dle stature, well proportioned, and of a fair com- 
plexion. There was an admirable mixture of grav- 
ity and sweetness in his countenance ; his eyes 
beamed intelligence, sensibility, and benignity. He 
had a quickness in his motions, even in old age, 
which indicated the activity and energy of his mind. 
Contrary to the fashion of the times, he wore his 
own hair, which was black, and ig advanced life 
retained the original color. Though he took little 
exercise, was a close student, extremely abstemious, 
and sometimes ailing; on the whole, he enjoyed 
good health ; and, at the advanced period of three- 
score years and ten, looked well. 

We shall now proceed to record some miscella- 
neous particulars, illustrative of the character and 
piety of Archbishop Leighton. 

His character was eminently devotional ; prayer 
and praise were his business and his pleasure. His 
manner of praying was very earnest and impor- 
tunate. To the Lord’s prayer he was particularly 
partial, and he said of it, “ Oh, the spirit of this 
prayer would make rare Christians.” He consid- 
ered prayer, fervent, frequent, intercessory prayer, 
to be a capital part of the clerical office ; and would 
repeat with great approbation that apophthegm of a 
pious bishop—* IVecesse est, non ut multim legamus, 


64 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


sed ut multim oremus.” This he accounted the 
vessel, with which alone living water can be drawn 
from the well of Divine mysteries. Without it, he 
thought, the application of the greatest human pow- 
ers to theology would turn out a laborious vanity ; 
and in support of this opinion he adduced the con- 
fession of Erasmus, that, when he began to ap 
proach the verities of celestial wisdom, he thought 
he understood them pretty well; but after much 
study of commentators, he was infinitely more per- 
plexed than before. With what a holy emphasis 
would Leighton exclaim, in commenting upon the 
words of David, “‘ Thou, O God, hast taught me.” 
Pointing to his books one day, he said to his 
nephew, “‘ One devout thought is worth them all ;” 
meaning, no doubt, that no accumulation of know- 
ledge is comparable in value with internal holiness. 

Of his delight in the inspired volume the amplest 
proof is afforded by his writings, which are a golden 
weft, thickly studded with precious stones from that 
mine, in beautiful arrangement. How would he 
lament that most people, instead of feeding upon 
scriptural truths, instead of ruminating on them 
leisurely, and prolonging the luxury as skilful epi- 
cures would do, rather swallowed them down whole 
like bitter pills, the taste of which is industriously 
disguised! His French bible, now in the library 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 65 


of Dunblane, is marked in numerous places ; and 
the blank leaves of it are filled with extracts made 
by his own pen from Jerome, Chrysostom, Gregory 
Nazianzen, and several other fathers. But the 
Bible, which he had in daily use, gave yet stronger 
testimony to his intimate and delightful acquaint- 
ance with its contents. With the book of Psalms 
he was particularly conversant, and would some- 
times style it, by an elegant application of a scrip- 
tural metaphor, “a bundle of myrrh, that ought to 
lie day and night in the bosom.” Song of Solo- 
mon, 1:13. His nephew writes, there was scarce 
a line in that sacred Psalter that had passed with- 
out the stroke of his pencil. 

The Sabbath was his day of delight; and he 
would repair to God’s house with a willing spirit, 
even when his body was infirm. One rainy Sab- 
bath, when he was unwell, he persisted in attend- 
ing church, and said, in excuse for his apparent 
rashness, “‘ Were the weather fair, I would stay at 
home ; but since it is foul, 1 must go; lest I be 
thought to countenance, by my example, the irre- 
ligious practice of letting trivial hindrances keep us 
back from public worship.” 

His religion was incorporated with the whole 
frame of his life and conversation. This gave a 


peculiarity, which was striking and impressive, to 
Arch. Leigh. 5 


66 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


many of his ordinary actions. They were the same 
things which other men did, but they were done in 
another manner, and bore the shining print of his 
angelic spirit. 

So impressively was this the case that his nephew, 
when a little child, struck with his reverential man- 
ner of returning thanks after a meal, observed to 
his mother, that “ his uncle did not give thanks like 
other folk.” 

It may be doubted whether Christianity, in the 
days of its youthful vigor, gave birth to a more 
finished pattern than Leighton of the love of holi- 
ness. It was truly his reigning passion ; and his 
longing to depart hence grew out of an intense 
desire to be transformed into the Divine likeness. 
“To be content to stay always in this world,” he 
observed, “ is above the obedience of angels. Those 
holy spirits are employed according to the perfec- 
tion of their natures, and restlessness in hymns of 
praise is their only rest.”” Often would he bewail 
the proneness of Christians to stop short of that per- 
fection, the pursuit of which is enjoined upon us ; 
and it was his grief to observe, that even good men 
are content to be “low and stunted vines.” The 
wish nearest his heart was, to attain to the measure 
of the stature of the fulness of Christ ; and all his 
singularities, for such to our reproach they are, 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 67 


arose from this desire being in him so much more 
ardent than it is in ordinary Christians. In the 
subjoined letter, this habit of mind, this insatiable 
longing after perfect holiness, is finely portrayed. 
It was written when he was Principal of the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh. 


“ Sir, 

“Oh! what a weariness is it to live amongst 
men, and find so few men; and among Christians, 
and find so few Christians; so much talk and so 
little action ; religion turned almost to a tune and 
air of words; and amidst all our pretty discourses, 
pusillanimous and base and so easily dragged into 
the mire, self and flesh and pride and passion domi- 
neering, while we speak of being in Christ, and 
clothed with him, and believe it because we speak 
of it so often and so confidently. Well I know you 
are not willing to be thus gulled, and having some 
giances of the beauty of holiness, aim no lower than 
perfection, which is the end we hope to attain ; and 
in the meanwhile the smallest advances toward it 
are more worth than crowns and sceptres. I be- 
lieve you often think on those words of the blessed 
champion Paul, 1 Cor. 9 : 24, ete. There is a 
noble guest with us. Oh! let all our business be 
to entertain him honorably, and to live in celestial 


68 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


love within ; that will make all things without be 
very contemptible in our eyes. I should rove on 
did not I stop myself, it falling out well too for that, 
to be hard upon the post hours ere [ thought of 
writing. Therefore, good night is all I add; for 
whatsoever hour it comes to your hand, I believe 
you are as sensible as | that it is still night; but 
the comfort is, it draws nigh toward that bright 
morning that shall make amends. 
“Your weary fellow pilgrim, oni.” 


To another person he writes: 

“Thorns grow everywhere and from all things 
below, and to a soul transplanted out of itself into 
the root of Jesse, peace grows everywhere too, from 
Him who is called our peace, and whom we still 
find the more to be so, the more entirely we live in 
him, being dead to this world, and self, and all 
things beside him. Oh, when shall it be 2 Well, let 
all the world go as it will, let this be our only pur- 
suit and ambition, and to all other things fiat voluntas 
tua, Domine, ‘ Lord, thy will be done!’ ” 


Of the effectual eloquence of Leighton’s great 
example, a striking instance is adduced in Mr. Ed- 
ward Lightmaker’s letter. The writer’s father, 
after witnessing the holy and mortified life of this 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 69 


eminent saint, became sensible, that a man is in no 
safe condition for dying, unless he be striving after 
the highest degrees of piety. “If none shall go to 
heaven,”’ he exclaimed, “ but so holy a man as this, 
what will become of me?” Under these impres- 
sions, he very much withdrew from the world ; 
relinquished a profitable business, because of its 
dangerous entanglements ; and made the care of 
his ultimate felicity his chief occupation. 

Such consequences might well be expected to 
flow from an intimacy with Leighton, for his dis- 
course breathed the spirit of heaven. To no one, 
perhaps, do the exquisite lines of the Christian poet 
Cowper more accurately apply: 


« When one, that holds communion with the skies, 
Has filled his urn where these pure waters nse, 
And once more mingles with us meaner things, 
Tis e’en as if an angel shook his wings ; 
Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide, 

That tells us whence his treasures are supplied.” 


The following extract breathes the spirit of a 
Christian hero : 

“Courage, it shall be well! We follow a con- 
quering General ; yea, who hath conquered already ; 
et qui semel vicit pro nobis, semper vincit in nobis, 
‘He who hath once conquered for us, always con- 
quers in us.’ For myself at present, I am, (as we 


70 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


used to say,) that is, this little contemptible lodge 
of mine, is not very well; but that will pass some 
way or other, as it is best; and even while the 
indisposition lasts, O! how much doth it heighten 
the sweet relish of peace within, of which I cannot 
speak too highly. But methinks I find a growing 
contempt of all this world, and consequently some 
further degrees of that quiet which is only subject 
to disturbance by our inordinate fancies and desires, 
and receding from the blessed centre of our rest: 
for hurries of the world, you know the way, Isaiah 26 : 
20, and in these retiring rooms we may meet, and 
be safe and quiet.” 

He seldom discoursed on secular matters without 
happily and naturally throwing in some spiritual 
reflections ; and it was his professed opinion, that 
nothing takes off more from the authority of minis- 
ters and the efficacy of their message, than a cus- 
tom of vain and frivolous conversation. Indeed, he 
had brought himself into so composed a gravity, 
(writes his first biographer,) that I never saw him 
laugh, and but seldom smile ; and he kept himself 
in such a constant recollection that I do not remem- 
ber that I ever heard him say one idle word. He 
seemed to be in a perpetual meditation. Although 
he was not at all given to sermonize, yet any little 
incident that fell under his observation would cause 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 71 


some pious sentiment to drop from him, just as the 
slightest motion makes a brimful goblet run over. 
Meeting a blind beggar one day, he observed, “ Me- 
thinks this poor sufferer cries out in behalf of the 
whole human race, as its representative, and let 
what he so earnestly craves be given him as readily 
as God bestows a cure on the spiritually blind who 
ask it.” “It is extremely severe,” said his. sister, 
speaking to him of the season—“ But thou, O God, 
hast made summer and winter,’’ was his devout 
reply. Some one saying, “‘ You have been to hear 
a sermon ;”’ “I met a sermon,” was his answer, “a 
sermon de facto, (in reality,) for I met a corpse, 
and rightly and profitably are the funeral rites ob- 
served when the living lay it to heart.” Thus he 
endeavored to derive spiritual good out of every 
passing circumstance, and to communicate good to 
others. 

In a soul so full of heaven, there was little room 
for earthly attachments : indeed, the whole tone of 
his discourse, and the constant tenor of his life, 
evinced his detachment not only from pomps and 
riches and delicacies, but from what are usually 
esteemed to be common comforts and necessaries. 
To his judgment the middle condition of life best 
approved itself. ‘‘ Better to be in the midst,”’ were 
his words, “ between the two pointed rocks of deep 


72 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


penury and high prosperity, than to be on the 
sharps of either.”” But his choice, to quote his own 
emphatic expression, was TO CHOOSE NOTHING ; and 
he left it to a better wisdom than his own, to carve 
out his earthly lot. “If we are born to worldly 
riches, let us even take them, and endeavor to 
make friends with them who shall stand us in good 
stead when we are put out of our stewardship ; 
but to desire that our journey should be by the 
troublesome and dangerous road of worldly pros- 
perity, is a mighty folly.” He was pleased with 
an ingenious similitude of Dr. Sale’s, who com- 
pares the good things of this life to mushrooms, 
which need so many precautions in eating, that 
wholly to wave the dish is the safest wisdom. 

To corporal indulgences none was ever more 
indifferent. Indeed, he practised a rigorous abste- 
miousness, keeping three fasts in the week, and one 
of them always on the Sabbath; not from a super- 
stitious esteem of the bodily penance, but in order 
to make the soul light and active for the enjoyment 
of that sacred festival. His nephew thinks that he 
injured his health by excessive abstinence: but his 
own maxim was, “ that little eating, and little speak- 


ing, do no one any harm;” 


and he would say, 
pleasantly, when dinner was announced, “ Well, 


since we are condemned to this, let us sit down.” 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 73 


When his sister once invited him to eat of a par- 
ticular dish, extolling it as good, he declined it, say- 
ing, “ What is it good for but to please a wanton 
taste? One thing forborne is better than twenty 
things taken.” “But,” answered Mrs. Lightma- 
ker, ““why were these things bestowed on us 2?” 
“To see,” he rejoined, “ how well we could forbear 
them ;” and then added, “Shall I eat of this deli- 
cacy while a poor man wants his dinner?” He 
thought people in general much too expensive and 
curious in the preparation of their meals, and wished 
this domestic profusion were turned into a channel 
of distribution to the poor. Everything beyond the 
mere necessaries of life he termed the overflowings 
of a full cup, which ought not to run to waste, but 
descend into the poor man’s platter. The gratifica- 
tion of bodily appetite would not, he was persuaded, 
be so much reckoned on, if professed Christians had 
more “spiritual sensuality,” as he often termed 
that ardent relish, which is the characteristic of 
renewed souls, for the meat and drink, the hidden 
manna of God’s immortal banquet. 

He used to compare a man’s station in this life to 
an imprisonment ; and observed that, although it is 
becoming to keep the place of our confinement clean 
and neat, it were ill done to build upon it.” His 
sister thinking he carried his indifference to earthly 


74 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


things too far, and that his munificence required 
some check, said to him once, “If you had a wife 
and children, you must not act thus;” his answer 
was, “I know not how it would be, but I know how 
it should be. ‘Enoch walked with God, and begat 
sons and daughters.’ ” 

In truth, his liberality was boundless. All he 
received was distributed to the poor, except the bare 
pittance which his necessities imperiously demand- 
ed for himself. Unwilling, however, to gain any 
credit for beneficence, he commonly dispensed his 
bounty through the hands of others, as we learn 
from Bishop Burnet, who officiated as his almoner 
in London. 

In exemplification of his humane and amiable 
condescension to his friends and dependants, there 
is an anecdote, which will not disgrace our pages. 
He once had a Roman Catholic servant, who made 
a point of abstaining from flesh on fast days pre- 
scribed by the Romish calendar. Leighton, being 
apprised of this by Mrs. Lightmaker, commented 
on the vanity of such scruples, yet requested her to 
indulge the poor man with such fare as suited his 
erroneous piety, lest the endeavor to. dissuade him 
from the practice should drive him to falsehood or 
prevarication. “For to this,” he added, “ many 
poor creatures are impelled, not so much from a 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 75 


corrupt inclination, as for want of a handsome 
truth.” So gentle was he in his construction of the 
faults and foibles of others. 

It is of little moment to ascertain, even were it 
possible, whether this be the identical man-servant, 
whose idle pranks have earned him a never-dying 
fame in Dunblane and its neighborhood. The fol- 
lowing story may be taken as a sample of the pro- 
vocations, with which this thoughtless fellow used 
to try his master’s equanimity. Having a fancy 
one morning for the diversion of fishing, he locked 
the door of the house, and carried off the key, leav- 
ing his master imprisoned. He was too much 
engrossed with his sport to think of returning till 
the evening, when the only admonition he received 
for his gross behavior from the meek bishop was, 
“ John, when you next go a fishing, remember to 
leave the key in the door.” 

The whole history of Leighton’s life proclaims 
his abhorrence of persecution. It is related that 
his sister once asked him, at the request of a friend, 
what he thought was the mark of the Beast, at the 
same time adding, “I told the inquirer, that you 
would certainly answer that you could not tell.” 
“ Truly, you said well,” replied he ; “ but if I might 
fancy what it were, it would be something like a 
pair of horns that pusheth his neighbors, as hath 


76 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


been so much seen and practised in church and 
state.”” He also passed a severe sentence on the 
Romanists, “ who, in their zeal for making prose- 
lytes, fetched ladders from hell to scale heaven ;” 
and he deeply lamented that men of the reformed 
church should ever have given in to similar mea- 
sures. 

We have seen, in the narrative of his public con- 
duct, how firmly he withstood the cruel measures 
set on foot to produce a uniformity of worship in 
Scotland. Swords and halberds, tongs and pincers, 
were, in his esteem, most improper instruments for 
advancing the knowledge and practice of religion. 
“ For himself, he would suffer anything rather than 
touch a hair of the head, even of those who labored 
under such pitiable maladies as errors in faith must 
be accounted: or, if he did meddle with them, it 
should be with such a gentle touch as would prove 
the friendliness of his disposition and purpose.” “I 
prefer,” he has been heard to say, “ an erroneous 
honest man before the most orthodox knave in the 
world ; and I would rather convince a man that he 
has a soul to save, and induce him to live up to that 
belief, than to bring him over to my opinion in 
whatsoever else beside. Would to God that men 
were but as holy as they might be, in the worst of 
forms now among us! Let us press them to be holy, 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. MS 


and miscarry if they can.” Being told of a person 
who had changed his persuasion, all he said was, 
“Ts he more meek, more dead to the world ? If so, 
he has made a happy change.” 

It is related of him, that going one day to visit a 
leading minister of the presbytery, he found him 
discoursing to his company on the duties of a holy 
life. Leighton, instead of turning off to the subject 
of the current reasons for nonconformity, though he 
had gone for the express purpose of discussing them, 
instantly fell in with the train of conversation, and 
concluded his visit without attempting to change it. 
To some of his friends who remonstrated with him 
on this apparent oversight, “ Nay,” he replied, “ the 
good man and I were in the main agreed; and for 
the points in which we differ, they are mostly unim- 
portant ; and though they be of moment, it is ad- 
visable, before pressing any, to win as many volun- 
teers as we can.” 

This feature of his character is further illustrated 
by an anecdote, which there is every reason to 
believe authentic. A friend calling upon him one 
day, and not meeting him at home, learned, on 
inquiry, that he was gone to visit a sick Presbyte- 
rian minister on a horse which he had borrowed of 
the Catholic priest. 

His sobriety of mind and soundness of judgment 


78 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


ought not to be passed over in silence. These 
qualities were conspicuous in his never pretending 
to develope the secret things of God, notwithstanding 
the variety of his learning, and his talent for high 
speculation. Instead of hazarding a guess on a 
difficult point, to which he had been requested to 
turn his thoughts, he said to the inquirer, on meet- 
ing him some time afterwards, “I have not yet got 
the lesson you set me.’”? And to his nephew, who 
complained that there was a certain text of Scrip- 
ture which he could not understand, his answer 
was, “‘ And many more that I cannot.” In rever- 
ently standing aloof from those mysteries of the 
Divine nature and government, which are enshrined 
in a light no mortal eye can gaze upon undazzled, 
he discovered a judgment equal to his modesty, and 
exemplified the saying of Solomon, that “ with the 
lowly is wisdom.” Being once interrogated about 
the saints reigning with Christ, he tried to elude the 
question by merely replying, “If we suffer with 
him, we shall also reign with him.” Pressed, how- 
ever, to give his opinion, whether or not the saints 
would exercise rule in the earth, although Christ 
should not in person assume the sovereignty, he 
answered with exquisite judgment, “If God hath 
appointed any such thing for us, he will give us 
heads to bear such liquor: our preferment shall not 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 79 


make us reel.” Prying into matters of this nature, 
which the Spirit of God has apparently sealed up 
from man’s inquisitiveness, was, in his estimation, 
indecent and dangerous ; and he thought that pas- 
sionate curiosity, which overleaps the boundaries of 
revelation, might be well rebuked by the angel’s 
answer to Manoah, “ Why askest thou thus after 
my name, seeing it is secret?” “Enough” he 
said, “‘is discovered to satisfy us that righteousness 
and judgment are within, although round about his 
throne are clouds and darkness ;” and he blamed 
those, “ who boldly venture into the very thick dark- 
ness and deepest recesses of the Divine Majesty.” 

How discreet and tender a friend he was to per- 
sons laboring under religious doubts and perplexi- 
ties, the two following letters bear witness. 


“ Mapam, 

« Though I have not the honor to be acquainted 
with your ladyship, yet a friend of ours has 
acquainted me with your condition ; though I con- 
fess the unfittest of all men to minister anything of 
spiritual relief to any person, either by prayer or 
advice to you; but he could have imparted such a 
thing to none of greater secrecy, and withal, of 
greater sympathy and tender compassion toward 
such as are exercised with those kind of conflicts, 


80 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


as having been formerly acquainted with the like 
myself: all sorts of sceptical and doubtful thoughts 
touching those great points having not only passed 
through my head, but some of them have for some 
time sat most fast and painfully upon my mind ; 
but in the name of the Lord they were at length 
quite dispelled and scattered. And O that I could 
live and bless Him who is my deliverer and 
strength, my rock and fortress, where I have now 
found safety from these incursions! and I am very 
confident you shall shortly find the same: only 
wait patiently on the Lord, and hope in him, for 
you shall yet praise him for the help of his counte- 
nance ; and it is that alone that can enlighten you, 
and clear your mind of all those fogs and mists that 
now possess it, and calm those storms that are 
raised within. You do well to read good books that 
are proper for your help, but rather the shortest and 
plainest than the more tedious and voluminous, that 
sometimes entangle a perplexed mind yet more, by 
grasping many more questions, and answers, and 
arguments, than is needful; but, above all, still 
cleave to the incomparable spring of light and divine 
comfort—the Holy Scriptures, even in despite of all 
doubts concerning them. And when you find your 
thoughts in disorder, and at a loss, entertain no dis- 
pute with them by any means at that time, but 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 81 


rather divert from them to short prayer or to other 
thoughts, and sometimes to well-chosen company, or 
the best you can have where you are ; and at some 
other time, when you find yourself in a calmer and 
serener temper, and upon the vantage ground of a 
little more confidence in God, then you may resume 
your reasons against unbelief, yet so as to beware 
of casting yourself into new disturbances ; for when 
your mind is in a sober temper, there is nothing so 
suitable to its strongest reason, nothing so wise and 
noble as religion ; and to believe it is so rational, 
that as now I am framed, I am afraid that my belief 
proceeds too much from reason, and is not so divine 
and spiritual as I would have it; only when I find 
(as in some measure through the grace of God I do) 
that it hath some real virtue and influence upon my 
affections and track of life, I hope there is some- 
what of a higher tincture in it. But, in point of 
reason, | am well assured that all that I have heard 
from the wittiest Atheists and libertines in the world, 
is nothing but bold raving and madness, and their 
whole discourse a heap of folly and ridiculous non- 
sense ; for what probable account can they give of 
the wonderful frame of the visible world, without 
the supposition of an eternal and infinite Power, and 
wisdom, and goodness, that formed it and them- 


selves, and all things in it? And what can they 
Arch. Leigh. 6 


82 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


think of the many thousands of martyrs, in the first 
age of Christianity, that endured not simple death, 
but all the inventions of the most exquisite tortures, 
for their belief of that most holy faith ; which, if 
the miracles that confirmed it had not persuaded 
them so, they themselves had been thought the most 
prodigious miracles of madness in all the world ? 
It is not want of reason on the side of religion that 
makes fools disbelieve it; but the interest of their 
brutish lusts and dissolute lives makes them wish it 
were not true: and there is this vast difference 
betwixt you and them; they would gladly believe 
less than they do, and you would gladly believe 
more than you do: they are sometimes pained and 
tormented with apprehensions that the doctrine of 
religion is or may be true ; and you are perplexed 
with suggestions to doubt of it, which are to you as 
unwilling and unwelcome as those apprehensions 
of its truth are to them. Think you that Infinite 
Goodness is ready to take advantage of his poor 
creatures, and to reject and condemn those that, 
against all the assaults made upon them, desire to 
keep their heart for him, and to acknowledge him, 
and to love him, and live to him? He made us, and 
knows our mould; and, as a father pities his chil- 
dren, pities them that fear him, for he is their 
Father, and the tenderest and kindest of all fathers ; 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 83 


and as a father pities his child when it is sick, and 
in the rage and raving of a fever, though it even 
utter reproachful words against himself, shall not 
our dearest Father both forgive and pity those 
thoughts, in any child of his, that arise not from any 
wilful hatred of him, but are kindled in hell within 
them? And no temptation hath befallen you in 
this but that which has been incident to men, and to 
the best of men; and their heavenly Father hath 
not only forgiven them, but in due time hath given 
them a happy issue out of them, and so he will 
assuredly do to you. In the mean time, when 
these assaults come thickest and most violently 
upon you, throw yourself down at his footstool, and 
say, ‘O God, Father of mercies, save me from this 
hell within me; I acknowledge, I adore, I bless 
thee, whose throne is in heaven with thy blessed 
Son the crucified Jesus, and thy Holy Spirit ; and 
though thou slay me, yet will I trust in thee; but 
I cannot think thou canst hate and reject a poor soul 
that desires to love thee, and cleave to thee as long 
as I can hold by the skirts of thy garment, until 
thou violently shake me off, which I am confident 
thou wouldst not do, because thou art love and 
goodness itself, and thy mercies endure forever.’ 
Thus, or in what other frame your soul shall be 
carried to vent itself into his bosom, be assured 


84 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


your words, yea, your silent sighs and breathings, 
shall not be lost, but shall have a most powerful 
voice, and ascend into his ear, and shall return to 
you with messages of peace and love in due time ; 
and in the mean time, with secret supports that you 
faint not, nor sink into those deeps that threaten to 
swallow you up. But I have wearied you instead 
of refreshing you. Iwill add no more, but that the 
poor prayers of one of the unworthiest in the world, 
such as they be, shall not be wanting in your be- 
half; and he begs a share in yours, for neither you 
nor any in the world need that charity more than 
he does. Wait on the Lord and be of good courage, 
and he shall strengthen your heart: wait, I say, on 
the Lord.” 


The next is to some Christian friend, whose name 
is unknown. 


“ CurisTIAN FRIEND, 

“Though I had very little vacant time for it, yet 
I would have seen you, if I could have presumed it 
might have been any way useful to the quickening 
of your mind. However, since I heard of your con- 
dition, I cease not daily, as I can, to present it to 
Him who alone can effectually speak peace to your 
heart; and I am confident, in due time, will do so. 
It is he that stilleth the raging of the sea, and by a 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 85 


word can turn the violent storm into a great calm. 
What the particular thoughts or temptations are that 
disquiet you, I know not; but whatsoever they are, 
look above them, and labor to fix your eye on that 
infinite goodness which never faileth them that by 
naked faith do absolutely rely and rest upon it, and 
patiently wait upon Him who hath pronounced them 
all, without exception, blessed that do so. Say often 
within your heart, ‘Though he slay me, yet will I 
trust in Him;’ and if, after some interval, your 
troubled thoughts do return, check them still with 
the holy Psalmist’s words: ‘Why art thou cast 
duwn, O my soul,’ ete. If you can thoroughly sink 
yourself down through your own nothingness unto 
Him who is all, and, entirely renouncing your own 
will, embrace that blest and holy will in all things ; 
there I am sure you shall find that rest, which all 
your own distresses and all the powers of darkness 
shall not be able to deprive you of. I incline not to 
multiply words; and, indeed, other advice than this 
I have none to give you. The Lord of peace, by 
the sprinkling of the blood of his Son Jesus, and the 
sweet breathings of the great Comforter, his own 
Holy Spirit, give you peace in himself. Amen.” 


We learn from Bishop Burnet, “that his thoughts 
were lively, oft out of the way and surprising, yet 


86 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


just and genuine ;” 


and several of his sayings might 
be adduced to justify this praise, and to show him 
well read in the science of human nature and its 
management. It was an aphorism of his, that “ One 
half of the world lives upon the madness of the 
other.”” He well knew, writes his nephew, when 
it was expedient to be silent, and when it behooved 
him to speak—a knowledge not less rare than valu- 
able. One of his favorite axioms was, that “all 
things operate according to the disposition of the 
subject ;”” and he was of opinion, that the silence of 
a good man will sometimes convey a more effectual 
lesson than his discourse. ‘Two things,” he ob- 
served, “are commonly requisite to make religious 
advice salutary, namely, time and judgment ;” and 
he thought the following maxim might often be 
remembered with advantage—philosophandum, sed 
paucis. Accordingly, he was quite against jading 
hearers with discourses beyond the measure of 
their understanding, or their patience: “for ’tis 
better,” said he, “to send them home still hungry 
than surfeited.”” He was no advocate in general for 
crude and abrupt exposures of unpalatable truths. 
Being told of an author, who had entitled his per- 
formance, “ Naked truth whipt and stript,”’ his re- 
mark was, “It might have been better to clothe it ;” 
and he saw nothing praiseworthy in the roughness, 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 87 


misnamed honesty, of some people, “who would 
rather overturn the boat than trim it.””_ We only add, 
in illustration of this point of his character, a prayer 
which he used to offer up, which is pregnant with 
melancholy meaning: “ Deliver me, O Lord, from 
the errors of wise men; yea, and of good men.” 

Humility was a beautiful trait in the character 
of this excellent man, which shaded and recom- 
mended his other great and good qualities. Far 
from loving the preéminence, and courting ap- 
plause, he always kept in the background, and was 
occasionally forced from retirement only by an im- 
perious sense of duty. Instead of pushing himself 
at any time into notice, he shrunk as the sensitive 
plant when it is touched. The body of death sat 
heavy upon him, and, deeply sensible of his own 
imperfections, he grew in humility as he grew in 
holiness. His diffidence, however, was extreme; 
for, though frequently solicited to publish discourses, 
he would never consent; and none of his invalu- 
able works were printed during his life. 

Burnet mentions that “he seemed to have the 
lowest thoughts of himself possible, and to desire 
that all other persons should think as meanly of 
him as he did of himself; and he bore all sorts of 
ill-usage and reproach, like a man that took plea- 
sure in them.” 


88 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


The character of his mind is finely illustrated in 
the following passage from one of his letters: 


“ And now I have begun, I would end just here ; 
for I have nothing to say, nothing of affairs (to be 
sure) private nor public; and to strike up to dis- 
courses of devotion, alas! what is there to be said 
but what you sufficiently know, and daily read, and 
daily think, and, I am confident, daily endeavor to 
do? And Iam beaten back, if I had a great mind 
to speak of such things, by the sense of so great de- 
ficiency in doing those things that the most ignorant 
Christians cannot but know. Instead of all fine no- 
tions, I fly to Kugre tnenoov, Kesore trenoov (Lord, have 
mercy; Christ have mercy.) I think them the 
greatest heroes and excellent persons of the world, 
that attain to high degrees of pure contemplation 
and divine love; but next to those, them that are 
aspiring to that, and falling short of it, fall down 
into deep humility and self-contempt, and a real 
desire to be despised and trampled on by all the 
world; and I believe that they that sink lowest into 
that depth, stand nearest to advancement to those 
other heights; for the great King, who is the foun- 
tain of that honor, hath given us this character of 
himself, that he resists the proud, and gives grace 
to the humble. Farewell, my dear friend, and be so 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 89 


charitable as sometimes, in your addresses upward, to 
remember a poor sinner who no day forgets you. 


COWEN Fe 
« December 13, 1676.” 


On the eve of taking a bishoprick, when he per- 
ceived how many obstacles there were to his doing 
the good he wished to others, he said, “‘ Yet one 
benefit at least will arise from it. I shall break 
that little idol of estimation my friends have for me, 
and which I have been so long sick of.” Though 
he could not be ignorant of the value set on his pul- 
pit discourses, yet he looked upon himself as so 
ordinary a preacher, and so unlikely to do good, 
that he was always for giving up his place to other 
ministers ; and after he became a bishop, he always 
preferred preaching to small congregations, and 
would never give notice beforehand when he was to 
fill the pulpit. 

Of a piece with his rooted dislike to anything 
that seemed to imply consequence in himself, was 
his strong objection to have his portrait taken. 
When it was requested of him, he testified unusual 
displeasure, and said, “If you will have my like- 
ness, draw it with charcoal :’”” meaning, no doubt, 
that he was carbone notandus, as justly obnoxious to 
scorn and condemnation. His picture was, how- 
ever, clandestinely taken, when he was about the 


90 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


middle age; and as the engravings prefixed to his 
works are copied from it, it is a pleasure to know 
from such good authority as his nephew’s letter, 
that it greatly resembled him. 

He was possessed of a warm and affectionate dis- 
position, which was not extinguished by his super- 
lative love to God, though it was always kept in due 
subordination. In his commentary on the epistle of 
Peter, he remarks, that “our only safest way is to 
gird up our affections wholly,” and he lived up to this 
principle. Accordingly, after avowing once how 
partial he was to the amiable character and fine ac- 
complishments of a relation, he added, “ Neverthe- 
less, I can readily wean myself from him, if J cannot 
persuade him to become wise and good. Sine boni- 
tate nulla majestas, nullus sapor,’’? Without goodness 
there is no majesty, no savor. To him, as to that 
Holy One of whose spirit he partook largely, who- 
ever did the will of his heavenly Father were more 
than natural kindred. Such, therefore, of his rela- 
tions as were Christians indeed, had a double share of 
his tenderness ; and to the strength of this two-fold 
bond, not less than to his heavenly-mindedness, we 
may ascribe his exclamation on returning from the 
grave in which his brother-in-law had been interred, 
“Fain would I have thrown myself in with him.” 
A beautiful extract from a letter which he wrote 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 91 


to that gentleman, on the death of a particularly 
sweet and promising child, to whom he himself was 
tenderly attached, may here find a suitable place. 


“JT am glad of your health, and recovery of your 
little ones; but indeed it was a sharp rebuke of a 
pen that told me your pretty Johnny was dead, and 
I felt truly more than to my remembrance I did the 
death of any child in my lifetime. Sweet thing! 
and is he so soon laid to sleep? Happy is he! 
Though we shall have no more the pleasure of his 
lisping and laughing, he shall have no more the pain 
of crying, nor of being sick, nor of dying ; and hath 
wholly escaped the trouble of schooling and all other 
sufferings of boys, and the riper and deeper griefs 
of riper years ; this poorer life being all along no- 
thing but a linked chain of many sorrows and many 
deaths. Tell my dear sister she is now so much 
more akin to the other world, and this will quickly 
be passed to us all. John is but gone an hour or 
two sooner to bed as children use to do, and we are 
undressing to follow. And the more we put off the 
love of this present world, and all things superfluous, 
beforehand, we shall have the less to do when we 
lie down. It will refresh me to hear from you at 
your leisure. Sir, your affectionate brother, 


“R. LEIGHTON. 
«“ Epinsro’, Jan. 16th.” 


92 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


Leighton was a great admirer of rural scenery ; 
and, in his rides upon the Sussex downs, he often 
descanted, with sublime fervor, on the marvellous 
works of the Almighty Architect. Adverting to the 
boundless variety of creation, he remarked, that 
there is no wonder after a straw, omnipotence being 
as necessary to make the least things out of nothing 
as the greatest. But his lofty mind seemed espe- 
cially to delight in soaring to the celestial firma- 
ment, and expatiating through those stupendous 
vaults, from which so many glorious lamps are 
hung out, on purpose, he believed, to attract our 
thoughts to the glory that excelleth ; and “we miss 
the chief benefit they are meant to render us, if we 
use them not to light us up to heaven.” “It was a 
long hand,” he would exclaim, “and a strong hand 
too, that stretched out this stately canopy above us ; 
and to him whose work it is we may rightly ascribe 
most excellent majesty.” After some such expres- 
sions of devout amazement, he would sink into silent 
and adoring contemplation. 

Leighton was fond of music, both vocal and in- 
strumental, and delighted in its appropriation to 
divine uses; but he disapproved of its being made 
subservient to a refined sensuality, and declared 
that he preferred the croaking of frogs to the idle 
songs, which professed Christians sing and play 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 93 


without blushing or compunction. He contrasted 
the harp and psaltery of David, rehearsing the 
praises of the Lord, with the tabret and pipe, so 
loathed by Isaiah, because they were employed to 
inflame the passions and tickle the fancies of the 
lewd, and to divert their thoughts from those opera- 
tions of the Lord’s hands, “which utter the most 
harmonious music.” 

We have seen that his walk was direct to heaven, 
and the drift of his conversation habitually unearthly. 
He died daily by the mortification of his natural ap- 
petites and affections, and he was visibly perfect in 
that frame of mind which he wondered should not 
be universal, “‘in which every second thought is of 
death.” It was not in a melancholy tone that he 
touched on this serious subject; for the illusions 
spread over earthly things had long since faded away 
from his eyes, which were fixed, in the sublime an- 
ticipations of faith, on those blissful realities that 
shall open upon the redeemed of the Lord when they 
have shaken off mortality. To him, therefore, death 
had lost its sting ; it was become a pleasant theme, 
and gave occasion to some of his most cheerful say- 
ings. He would compare this heavy clod of clay 
with which the soul is encumbered, to the miry boots 
of which the traveller gladly divests himself on fin- 
ishing his journey; and he could not disguise his 


94 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


own wish to be speedily unclothed, instead of ling- 
ering below till his garments were worn out and 
dropped off through age. In general, his temper 
was serene rather than gay: but his nephew states, 
that if ever it rose to an unusual pitch of vivacity, 
it was when some illness attacked him; when “ from 
the shaking of the prison doors, he was led to hope 
that some of those brisk blasts would throw them 
open, and give him the release he coveted.” ‘Then 
he seemed to stand tip-toe on the margin of eternity 
in a delightful amazement of spirit, eagerly await- 
ing the summons to depart, and feeding his soul 
with the prospect of immortal life and glory. Some- 
times, while contemplating his future resting-place, 
he would break out in that noble apostrophe of pious 
George Herbert: 
“ O let me roost and nestle there ; 

Then of a sinner thou art rid, 

And I of hope and fear.” 

Hearing once of the death of a portly man, he ex- 
claimed, “ How is it that A has broken through 
those goodly brick walls, while I am kept in by a 
bit of flimsy deal ?”” He would say, pleasantly, that 
he had his night-cap on, and rejoiced that it was so 
near bedtime, or rather so near the hour of rising, 
to one who had long lain awake in the dark; and, 
pointing to the children of the family one evening, 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 95 


who were showing symptoms of weariness, and im- 
portuning to be undressed, he said, “Shall I, who 
am threescore and ten, be loth to go to bed?” This 
world he considered a state of nonage, and the land 
of mature man a land very far off. No saying of 
uninspired men pleased him better than that of Sen- 
eca: Illa dies, quam ut supremam metuisses, eterni- 
tatis natalis est, “ That day which you dread as the 
last, is the birthday of eternity.”” His alacrity to 
depart resulted from his earnest desire to “‘see and 
enjoy perfection, in the perfect sense of it, which he 
could not do and live.” ‘That consummation,” 
he would say, “is only a hope deferred, but when 
it cometh it will be a tree of life.”” Perhaps, in- 
deed, he would have been over-anxious to take wing, 
had not his impatience been balanced by profound 
submission to the Divine good pleasure. This alone 
prevented an excessive desire for the moment to ar- 
rive, when his soul, completely fledged, should spring 
into its proper element; should remove far away, 
not only from the wickedness of a profane world, 
but also from the childishnesses of religious Chris- 
tians ; and should be at rest amidst the truly reformed 
churches of just men made perfect—those happy 
circumferences, as he termed them, which are inti- 
mately and perfectly united to their Divine centre, 
and to each other. 


96 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


The following is an extract of a letter supposed 
to have been written a short time before his death: 


“T find daily more and more reason without me, 
and within me yet much more, to pant and long to 
be gone. I am grown exceeding weary in writing 
and speaking, yea, almost in thinking, when I re- 
flect how cloudy our clearest thoughts are ; but 
I think again, what other can we do till the day 
breaks, and the shadows flee away, as one that lieth 
awake in the night must be thinking; and one 
thought that will likely oftenest return, when by 
all other thoughts he finds little relief, is, When will 
it be day ?” 


Yet Leighton, for the comfort of weak believers 
be it recorded, did not pretend to an absolute assur- 
ance of final salvation. Conversing one day, in his 
wonted strain of holy animation, of the blessedness 
of being fixed as a pillar in the heavenly Jerusalem, 
to go no more out, Rey. iii. 12, he was interrupted 
by a near relation exclaiming, “ Ah! but you have 
assurance.” “No, truly,” he replied, “ only a good 
hope, and a great desire to see what they are doing 
on the other side; for of this world I am heartily 
weary.” 

With respect to his mental qualities, it may be 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 97 


safely affirmed by the most scrupulous encomiast, 
that he was gifted with a capacious mind, a quick 
apprehension, a retentive memory, a lively fancy, a 
correct taste, a sound and discriminating judgment. 
All these excellences are conspicuous in almost 
every page of his writings: for in Leighton’s com- 
positions there is an extraordinary evenness. One is 
not recruited here and there, by a striking thought 
or a brilliant sentence, from the fatigue of toiling 
through many a heavy paragraph, but “one spirit 
in them rules ;” and while he occasionally mounts 
to a surpassing height, he seldom or never sinks into 
flatness. The reason is, that he is always master 
of his subject, with a clear conception of his own 
meaning and purpose, and a perfect command of all 
the subsidiary materials; and still more, that his 
soul is always teeming with those divine inspira- 
tions, which seem vouchsafed only from time to 


time to ordinary mortals. 
Arch. Leigh. 7 f 


98 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


CHAPTER IV. 


BRIEF SKETCH OF HIS WRITINGS. 


We shall now present our readers with a sketch 
of the leading excellences of Leighton’s writings, 
abridged from his life, written by the Rev. J. Jer- 
ment, to which we are indebted for several extracts. 

Leighton’s acquaintance with classical literature 
was various and profound, but divinity was his 
principal study. His discourses possess uncommon 
merit ; and, though they must labor under the dis- 
advantage of posthumous works, none of them being 
intended by him for the public eye, and therefore 
not having been touched by his finishing hand, they 
nevertheless rank high both in matter and language. 
His works may be compared to a river, deep and 
clear, gentle and pleasant, which, winding through 
the valleys, refreshes, adorns and fructifies, wherever 
it flows. The streams have, for many years, made 
glad the city of God. 

Leighton preached the Gospel both in fine restrict- 
ed and in the enlarged sense of the term. The glad 
tidings of full and free salvation through the righte- 
ousness of Jesus Christ, the grace of God, and the 
work of the Holy Spirit, were published by this 
faithful messenger. Yet he neglected not to preach 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 99 


the moral law for the conviction of transgressors, 
and as an immutable rule of life to them who be- 
lieve. Nay, all revealed truths which form the 
links of one chain, and constitute the parts of one 
fabric, were attended to by Leighton, and exhibited 
in their proper place, order, and connection. The 
perfections, personal subsistence, and counsels of 
the Deity ; the primitive state and the fall of man ; 
the guilt and depravity of the human race ; the 
various workings and effects of moral corruption ; 
the essential and mediatorial characters of the 
Saviour ; the divinity of his person, his substitution 
in the place of the guilty, and his complete satisfac- 
tion for sin; the personality, divinity, operations, 
and influences of the Holy Spirit ; the free call of 
the Gospel ; the necessity of an appropriating faith ; 
justification freely by grace; the necessity of a 
new nature, and of holiness; perseverance in true 
religion ; the future felicity of the righteous, and 
eternal misery of the wicked : these were the topics 
on which this preacher of righteousness dwelt with 
perspicuity and energy. One or other of them 
occurs in every page, almost in every sentence 
of his writings. Generally, they appear as rich 
clusters, not as two or three berries on the up- 
permost bough. The trees of knowledge and of 
life, laden with the choicest fruits, were never per 


100 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


haps more closely united than in the writings of 
Leighton. 

Moreover, it not a little enhances the value of his 
writings, that he is fully aware how far the legiti- 
mate range of human inquiry extends, and what is 
the boundary Divine wisdom hath affixed to man’s 
inquisitiveness. While the half-learned theologian 
beats about in the dark, and vainly attempts a pas- 
sage through metaphysical labyrynths, which it is 
the part of sober wisdom not to enter, the sagacious 
Leighton distinctly sees the line, beyond which 
speculation is folly; and in stopping at that limit 
he displays a promptness of decision, commensurate 
with his unwavering certainty in proceeding up 
to it. 

The language of Leighton is unexceptionable, 
and extremely guarded ; he watches with the most 
vigilant care against legality on the one hand, and 
antinomianism on the other. 

Sublimity of thought, and sometimes of language, 
is another quality of his writings. The mind of 
Leighton was of a superior cast, and fitted to catch 
a portion of celestial elevation and fire. Of an 
ardent and feeling soul, he kindled and thrilled at 
the sight of objects adapted by their own nature, 
and by the manner of representing them, to aston- 
ish and entrance. Few pages in his works are 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 101 


without instances of sublimity, especially of sublime 
thought. While there is nothing low and grovel- 
ling, he frequently rises to the majestic. Two 
passages of this kind may be mentioned, and they 
are two among a great multitude equally grand. 


The first is in his discourse on Isaiah lx. 1; 
“ Arise, shine, for thy light is come,” etc. 


“ Arise then, for the glory of the Lord is risen. 
The day of the Gospel is too precious that any of it 
should be spent in sleep and idleness, or worthless 
business. Worthless business detains many of us ; 
arise, immortal souls, from moiling in the dust, and 
working in the clay, like Egyptian captives. Ad- 
dress yourselves to more noble work; there is a 
Redeemer come that will pay your ransom, and 
rescue you from such vile service for more excel- 
lent employment. It is strange how the souls of 
Christians can so much forget their first original 
from heaven, and their new hopes of returning 
thither, and the rich price of their redemption, and 
forgetting all these, dwell so low, and dote so much 
upon trifles: how is it that they hear not their Well- 
beloved’s voice, crying, Arise, my love, my fair one, 
and come away 2 Though the eyes of true believers 
are so enlightened that they shall not sleep unto 
death, yet their spirits are often seized with a kind 


102 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


of drowsiness and slumber, and sometimes even then 
when they should be of most activity. The time 
of Christ’s check to his three disciples made it very 
sharp, though the words are mild: What! could 
ye not watch with me one hour? Shake off, be- 
lieving souls, that heavy humor. Arise, and satiate 
the eye of faith with the contemplation of Christ’s 
beauty, and follow after him till you attain the place 
of full enjoyment. And you others that never yet 
saw him, arise, and admire his matchless excel- 
lency. The things you esteem great are so but 
through ignorance of his greatness; his brightness, 
if you saw it, would obscure to you the greatest 
splendor of the world, as all those stars that go 
never down upon us, yet they are swallowed up in 
the surpassing light of the sun when it arises. 
Arise from the dead, and he shall give you light. 
Arise, and work while it is day, for the night shall 
come wherein none can work, says our Saviour him- 
self. Happy are they that arise early in the morn- 
ing of their youth ; for the day of life is very short, 
and the art of Christianity long and difficult. Is it 
not a grievous thing, that men never consider why 
they came into the world till they be upon the point 
of going out again, nor think how to live till they be 
summoned to die? But most of all unhappy, he that 
never wakens out of that pleasing dream of false 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 103 


happiness, till he fall into eternal misery: arise, 
then, betimes, and prevent this sad awakening.” 


The second is from his sermon on John xxi. 22; 
«* What is that to thee ? Follow thou me.” 


* Let us therefore follow the Holy Jesus. Other 
concernments concern us not, compared to this. 
What is that to thee? may be said of all things be- 
side this. All the world is one great impertinency 
to him who contemplates God and his Son Jesus. 
Great things, coaches, furniture, or houses, concern 
the outward pomp or state of the world, but not the 
necessities of life ; neither can they give ease to 
him that is pinched with any one trouble. He that 
hath twenty houses lies but in one at once ; he that 
hath twenty dishes on his table hath but one mouth 
to fill ; so, ad supervacua sudatur, ‘he sweats about 
superfluities.” All are uncertain; sudden storms 
fall on ; and riches fly away as a bird to heaven, 
and leave those who look after them sinking to hell 
in sorrow. 

«“ A Christian is solicitous about nothing: if he 
be raised higher, it is what he desires not; if he 
fall down again, he is where he was. A well-fixed 
mind, though the world should crack about him, 
shall be in quiet ; but when we come to be stretched 
on our death-bed, things will have another visage ; 


104 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


it will pull the rich from his treasure, strip the great 
of his robes and glory, and snatch the amorous gal- 
lant from his fair beloved mistress, and from all we 
either have or grasp at. Only sin will stick fast, 
and follow us; those black troops will clap fatal 
arrests on us, and deliver us over to the jailor. Are 
these contrivances, or the dark dreams of melan- 
choly 2? All the sublimities of holiness may be 
arrived at by the deep and profound belief of these 
things. Let us therefore ask, Have we walked 
thus, and dressed our souls by this pattern? But 
this hath a nearer aspect to pastors, who should be 
copies of the fair original, and second patterns who 
follow nearer Christ: they should be imitating him 
in humility, meekness, and contempt of the world, 
and particularly in affection to souls, feeding the 
flock of God. Should we spare labor, when he 
spared not his own blood ?” 


Leighton’s style is generally distinguished for 
clearness and simplicity, and when the most ele- 
vated, is the most simple and clear. He did not 
pay much attention to an exact arrangement of his 
subjects. 

A sweet and mellow pathos is certainly one char- 
acteristic of his style; but there is nothing in it 
languid or effeminate. While the suavity of his 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 105 


spirit flavors all his productions, the strength of his 
well-informed and masculine understanding makes 
them abundantly solid and nutritious. He is not 
like a pulpy reed, distilling luscious juices: he is a 
rock pouring forth rivers of oil. 

No formal method occurs in any of his discourses ; 
he seldom gives more than one sermon on the same 
text; condenses and throws out massy thoughts, 
complete and entire; and, when he strikes a rich 
vein, pursues it in a few sentences or pages with 
astonishing dexterity. Somewhat of the French 
manner, without its lightness and gayety, appears in 
his compositions. 

It may be naturally expected from this account, 
that our author would be remarkable for variety. 
His invention was fertile and forcible; being ap- 
plied by a mind well stored, and guided by a mature 
and vigorous judgment. He treats a vast variety 
of subjects with the grace of novelty, and the same 
subject always in a new manner. 

It is difficult to say on what point Leighton ex- 
celled. He touches occasionally every doctrine of 
the Gospel, and always with the hand of a master ; 
and, in every discourse, exhibits fully the way of 
salvation. In his sermons, doctrinal, experimental, 
and practical religion are finely blended. 

Neither can it have escaped the observation of one 


106 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


at all conversant with his writings, that it is never 
the purpose of his mind to make good any particu- 
lar system of divinity, nor to fortify its weak posi- 
tions, and set off its strong proofs and advantages. 
He is constantly aiming at higher matters; and 
shakes off with disdain the servile fetters, which 
would shackle the free and generous spirit of reli- 
gion. Leighton, though the humblest of mankind, 
was not weakly distrustful of his own powers; and 
therefore we never find him slavishly treading in 
the footsteps of predecessors. Yet, though free and 
independent, he is not audacious and dogmatical. 
The points, indeed, on which his soul was con- 
stantly fixed, whence accrues such a heavenly gran- 
deur to all his discourses, were the noble vocation 
of a Christian, and the height to which a regenerate 
soul ought to rise above sublunary objects: the 
nearness of death; the mysterious vastness of the 
Godhead ; the stupendous concerns of eternity ; and 
the blessedness resulting from close communion with 
the Father of Spirits, and from conformity to the 
pattern which Jesus Christ bequeathed to his fol- 
lowers, of consummate purity and virtue. When 
Leighton addresses himself to these matters, he does 
indeed utter his voice from high places; and im- 
presses us with the idea of a man, who, from an 
emineace beyond the region of fogs and clouds and 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 107 


meteors, has surveyed whatever is above and be- 
neath, things in heaven and things upon the earth, 
with a vast advantage for rating justly the value of 
the one and of the other. He seems to have lately 
come down from conversing with God upon the 
mount, anointed, and preéminently qualified to re- 
present the high-priest of the Christian temple ; to 
draw aside the outward veil, and to disclose the 
glorious spirit of religion in its innermost sanc- 
tuary. 

In his discourses there is the solemnity of a man 
of God and a messenger of the King eternal. After 
a short and impressive preface, Leighton spent a 
few minutes in prayer, and then preached. Stand- 
ing in the pulpit, he remembered that having just 
spoken to God, he was now speaking for him. An 
air of deep seriousness pervaded all his discourses. 
He constantly spoke as a dying man to fellow mor- 
tals; as a herald to rebels, who have only a mo- 
ment to consider; as a father to his children about 
their most important concerns. One sees, in every 
sentence, the dignified, earnest, faithful ambassador 
of Heaven. 

It is impossible to dip into his writings, without 
observing with how brilliant a fancy he was en- 
dowed. They sparkle with beautiful images, which 
either are drawn from the magazines of Scripture, 


108 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


or are such as would naturally present themselves 
to an inventive and elegant mind, furnished, as 
Leighton’s was, with the literary products of every 
clime and age, and with the accumulated stores of 
civil and ecclesiastical erudition; and intent upon 
making whatever it has collected subservient to the 
illustration of divine truth. By his holy skill sa- 
cred learning is made to purify profane, and profane 
learning to elucidate and embellish sacred. The 
gold and silver of Egypt are moulded into vessels 
for the tabernacle of Jehovah; while, the living 
waters of the sanctuary are taught to meander 
through fields of classic lore, imparting to their pro- 
duce celestial fragrancy and virtue. 

In the works of Leighton, the thoughts rise natu- 
rally from the subject, distil as honey from the comb, 
and run clear to the last drop. He always enters 
on his subject like one who is master of it; and, 
throughout the discourse, seems to be at home, in a 
neat dress, and with easy manners. Even learned 
references and allusions, though a kind of foreigners, 
are introduced without any constraint, or stiff cere- 
mony, and have almost the appearance and ease of 
natives. 

But that which adds so peculiar a zest to his com- 
positions, is the quality usually denominated Uncetion. 
His mouth spake out of the abundance of his heart. 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 109 


Instead of a dry didactic statement, which, how 
faultless soever in doctrine and form, will seldom 
beget sympathy, we have in him the libation upon 
the sacrifice—the holy affections of his soul poured 
out on the solid products of his understanding, and 
imparting to them a delicious odor and irresistible 
penetrancy. In every page of his books there is an 
impassioned earnestness, a soul-subduing pathos, 
which make it impossible to doubt that the impres- 
sions he strives to communicate are deeply engraven 
on his spirit. Indeed he does not seem to appeal so 
much to his readers, as unconsciously to let them 
into the chamber of his own soul, on which they 
may see the Gospel traced in its native lineaments: 
and may recognize the loveliness of divine truth in 
the most perfect union, of which it is capable, with 
the heart and understanding ofa frail and fallible 
mortal. 

In the sermons of Leighton there is nothing pue- 
rile, low, or ludicrous; no fantastic conceits and 
impertinent pleasantries ; no wild interpretations of 
Scripture and bombastic rhapsodies; no desultory 
and pedantic excursions. He scorned to set off his 
matter, or scrupled to profane it, with a tawdry 
dress and garish colors. His phraseology, at once 
sedate and noble, well becomes the ambassador of 
Heaven ; and denotes a profound veneration for the 


-~ 

110 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 

Oracles of God, a pious dread of distorting their 
sense, or giving a human figure and color to any 
portion of revelation, and an ardent desire to con- 
vert thoughtless sinners, and to edify serious be- 
lievers. Such were his matter and diction, with 
which his manner in the pulpit comported. Supe- 
rior to popular applause, he had no peculiarities 
about his delivery ; unless indeed simplicity, ear- 
nestness, and gravity, were at that time uncommon 
qualities. He never aimed at effect by oratorical 
grimace, nor strove, as was much the practice, to 
carry his hearers by a tempest of voice and gesture ; 
and indeed the natural feebleness of his voice would 
have interdicted such exertions, had his taste per- 
mitted them. But, when he preached, the manner 
was in admirable harmony with the message; and 
so well did the majesty and beauty of his enuncia- 
tion accord with the solemn truths of which he was 
the herald, that the congregations he addressed were 
subdued and enchained, as if by the magic of an un- 
earthly eloquence. 

Seriousness is essential to unction; and this in- 
cludes not merely warmth, but a certain heavenly, 
penetrating strain in the turn of sentiment and ex- 
pression: when discourses are delivered there must 
be a similar strain in the modulation of the voice, 
and in the whole manner. 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 111 


To impart sap, and vital heat, the pure Gospel is 
necessary ; and for the want of it, no abilities, no 
correctness, no elegance, can possibly compensate. 
Sermons, from which the peculiar doctrines of Chris- 
tianity are almost wholly excluded, may paint to 
the imagination, but never to the heart: they ex- 
hibit in their finest imagery only beautiful icicles, 
and all their flowers bloom in the polar regions. 
These may be the effect, it is true, of a lively and 
warm fancy ; but the heart of the preacher appears 
to be untouched, and discovers nothing of the ardor 
and sweets of devotion. 

Leighton’s discourses have a high degree of 
warmth and unction. They are a sweet savor of 
Christ, and as ointment poured forth. Their beauty 
is as the olive-tree, and their smell as Lebanon. 
The face of the preacher is anointed with the oil of 
gladness, shines with heavenly lustre, and diffuses 
fragrance all around. One cannot read a page 
without being moved and refreshed: a soft, balmy 
sensation thrills through the soul. 

The works of Leighton, however, are not merely 
suitable, but highly gratifying to a spiritual taste. 
Without a single exception, they are eminently prac- 
tical. 

Leighton excels in explaining and urging relig- 
ious and moral duties; and he always grafts and 


112 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


builds them on the doctrines of the Gospel. These 
are the proper root of the tree, and the only founda- 
tion of a good superstructure. 

Our author never loses sight, for a moment, either 
of the necessity of religious and moral conduct, or 
of the place which it should occupy. Some of his 
discourses are entirely practical; but still he keeps 
in view the root and foundation. In other discourses, 
which are doctrinal, he intersperses practical hints; 
and shows at large the necessity of obedience to the 
law, in both its essential parts. His highest rap- 
tures are the reverse of enthusiasm ; as they lead, 
with increased force, to the way of the Divine com- 
mandments. 

But the crowning excellence of Leighton’s dis- 
courses is, the deep and rich vein of experimental 
religion which runs through them all. Experimen- 
tal religion is to the practice of piety and morality, 
what life is to motion, or the heart to the body—the 
necessary spring and impulse. The former, too, 
always includes proper exercise of soul, or is ac- 
companied with it. The God of grace meets those 
who rejoice, and work righteousness ; those who re- 
member him in his ways, and ask the way to 
with their faces thitherward. Discourses, in which 
religious experience and religious exercises are 
totally omitted, or scarcely ever touched, are essen- 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 113 


tially defective. The tree must be made good, that 
the fruit may be sound and sweet; the fountain be 
purified, that the waters may be salutary. Accord- 
ingly, Leighton often urges the absolute necessity 
of the first and radical experience of religion, in a 
change of nature. He dwells frequently on relig- 
ious experiences and exercises, both pleasant and 
painful ; on the various workings of gracious prin- 
ciples, and of remaining depravity. Our author, at 
the same time, warns against enthusiasm ; or heat 
without light, impression without practice. While, 
on the one hand, he directs and comforts the genuine 
saint ; on the other he exposes and alarms the self- 
deceiver. Some have remarked, and justly, that 
among the reasons why the Gospel is committed to 
men, and not to angels, God in wisdom and kind- 
ness intended that his servants should be capable of 
entering deeply into the feelings of their hearers, of 
experiencing the power of saving grace, and exem- 
plifying all the duties of religion. Leighton, in this 
point of view, was an experimental and practical 
preacher. He writes like one who knew and felt 
the terrors of the Lord, and who had also tasted that 
the Lord is gracious. He appears, in various in- 
stances, to be detailing his own experience and ex- 
ercises ; and sometimes passes from instruction to 


confession, ejaculation, and vraise. As a nurse, he 
Arch. Leigh. 8 


114 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


is not only gentle, and cherisheth; but takes by 
the arms, and teaches to go; and feeds his beloved 
charge with the same provision which, like the milk 
of the nurse, had been first received and digested 
by himself. 

There is an inflexible and happy uniformity in 
Dr. Leighton’s writings. Whether he was the Pres- 
byterian minister of Newbottle, or the Bishop of 
Dunblane, or the Archbishop of Glasgow ; whether 
he preached in the most obscure parish church, or 
in the most conspicuous and magnificent cathedral ; 
before illiterate rustics, or before the high court of 
Parliament, he published the Gospel of grace with 
the same plainness and the same warmth. 


The following description of his principal works 
is abridged from the Rev. J. N. Pearson’s Life of 
Leighton, to which we are considerably indebted for 
several portions of his history. 


“The work which is the crown of his posthumous 
glory, is the Commentary on the First Epistle of 
St. Peter. It is a treasury of sound experimental 
divinity, and argues an extraordinary ripeness of 
Christian attainments. It was probably delivered 
from the pulpit, and is drawn out in the familiar 
form of exposition ; the clauses, and sometimes the 
emphatic words of each text being ordinarily ex- 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 115 


plained in course, and no artificial arrangement ob- 
served in discussing the several subjects introduced 
by the apostle. Still the general scope and cohe- 
rence of each passage are carefully kept in view, 
and the main truth, asserted or proved, is never lost 
sight of in unfolding the particular propositions from 
which it is educed. The work will always class 
among the first of uninspired books, and can never 
cease to constitute the admiration and delight of the 
Christian and the scholar. 

** Next in worth to this Commentary, are his Ex- 
positions of ‘The Lord’s Prayer,’ and the ‘Ten 


” which seem to have been care- 


Commandments ; 
fully pondered. The fragment of a Commentary on 
the first eight chapters of St. Matthew’s Gospel, has 
touches of his fine genius, and is imbued with his 
heavenly spirit. His Meditations on Psalms iv., 
XXxii., and exxx., and his Lectures on Psalm xxxix., 
are sketches only, but they show the hand of a mas- 
ter. The Meditations, which were spoken in Latin 
to the Edinburgh collegians, are felicitous essays, 
glistening with holy animation, and are more clas- 
sically adorned than the Expository Lectures ; not, 
however, in a degree to unfit them for the closet of 
unlettered devotion. 

“Tn the Latin Prelections, the principal doctrines 
of the Christian faith are developed with exquisite 


116 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


learning, judgment, and piety. These lectures con- 
stitute a valuable series of theological instructions ; 
and were probably delivered pretty much in the 
order in which they are now arranged. After 
showing that happiness, of which so strong a desire 
is implanted in the human breast, is not to be drawn 
from earthly fountains, he proves that an immortal 
nature must fetch its joys from immortal sources. 
Hence he is led to treat of the existence, the nature, 
and the government of God, which he does with equal 
energy and sobriety ; demonstrating the title such a 
Being possesses to the affectionate allegiance of his 
rational creatures, whose felicity must depend on 
their maintaining that place in the moral system of 
the universe, wherein the wise economy of the Crea- 
tor hath fixed them. He then represents the exten- 
sive ruin that ensued from the defection of Adam ; 
and goes on to the reparation, achieved by Messiah, 
of the injury done to God by the primal sin, and the 
destruction it brought upon mankind. The nature 
of Christian salvation is further developed, as con- 
sisting in the engrafting of vital and immortal prin- 
ciples in the soul by the mysterious energy of the 
Holy Spirit; which process constitutes the true 
adoption of sinners through the Saviour, and is their 
temporal initiation to the enjoyment of life eternal. 
Moreover he expatiates, with great beauty and em- 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 117 


phasis, on the happiness of a life regulated by the 
fear of God and by the rules of the Gospel; and he 
exhorts the students to put forth all their ardor in 
prosecuting that divine science, which lays open 
the passage to imperishable glory. 

The style of these lectures justifies Bishop Bur- 
net’s commendation of our author’s latinity. Not 
formed upon any one particular pattern, but pure, 
simple, and flowing, his diction indicates a large and 
critical acquaintance with the best models. It is the 
phraseology of a man who thought in Latin, and not 
of one who clothed in a foreign dress ideas which 
were preconceived in his native tongue. Hence 
these dissertations are not mere jingle and glitter, 
but are solid and argumentative. Useless words 
and phrases are never introduced to embellish a 
period; nor does an apt thought ever seem to be 
abandoned too soon, or imperfectly evolved, from 
the writer being at a difficulty how to embody it in 
a strange language. He moves in Roman armor 
with as little embarrassment as in a native garb. 
In these lectures, moreover, which were addressed to 
literary students, Leighton permits himself to quote 
largely from heathen authors; and one is struck 
with amazement at the extent of his erudition, which 
is not ostentatiously exposed, but comes in most 
appropriately wherever it can avail to throw light 


118 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


upon the subjects he is treating. The whole volume 
of profane literature seems to be unrolled before 
him, and is not too expanded for his ample survey. 
The philosophers, the poets, the historians of Rome 
and Athens—all the sons of science, whether Jews 
or Gentiles, ancient or modern—all are cited to 
pay the various homage, enjoined by natural reason 
or primeval tradition, to the being, the perfections, 
the natural and moral government of God; and to 
confirm the need of a revelation, which should ca- 
pacitate men to recover, under a new grant and title, 
the honors, possessions, and immunities forfeited by 
disobedience. 

The Parzeneses were short exhortations to the 
scholars about to graduate, and were composed in 
Latin. In them it is the speaker’s great endeavor 
to guard his auditors against an overweening esti- 
mate of human learning and literary honors, and to 
incite them to strive after the knowledge of God as 
he reveals himself to mankind in the Gospel. Each 
of these hortatory addresses concludes with a beau- 
tiful and appropriate prayer; and they, as well as 
the lectures, breathe an affectionate desire to turn 
the hearts of the collegians from that vain know- 
ledge which increaseth sorrow, to that true and 
heavenly wisdom by which all who possess it are 
exalted to honor. 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 119 


We now add a few extracts from Dr. Doddridge’s 
Preface to Leighton’s works. 


“On the whole, the preparing these volumes for 
the press hath generally taken up a little of my 
time in the intervals of other business daily, for 
several months; but I am far from repenting of the 
labor I have bestowed on it. The delight and edi- 
fication which I have found in the writings of this 
wonderful man (for such I must deliberately call 
him) would have been a full equivalent for my 
pains, separate from all prospect of the effect which 
they might have upon others. For, truly, I know 
not that I have ever spent a quarter of an hour in 
reviewing any of them, but even amidst that inter- 
ruption which a critical examination of the copy 
would naturally give, I have felt some impression 
which I could always wish to retain. I can hardly 
forbear saying, as a considerable philosopher and 
eminent divine said to me: ‘There is a spirit in 
Archbishop Leighton I never met with in any hu- 
man writings; nor can I read many lines in them 
without being moved.’ 

“ Jndeed it would be difficult for me to say where, 
but in the Sacred Oracles, I have found such heart- 
affecting lessons of simplicity and humility, candor 
and benevolence, exalted piety without the least 


120 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


tincture of enthusiasm, and an entire mortification to 
every earthly interest without any mixture of splen- 
etic resentment. Nor can | ever sufficiently admire 
that artless manner in which he lays open, as it 
were, his whole breast to the reader, and shows, 
without séeming to be at all conscious of it himself, 
all the various graces that can adorn and ennoble 
the Christian, running like so many veins of pre- 
cious ore in the rich mine where they grew. And 
hence, if I mistake not, is that wonderful energy of 
his discourses, obvious as they seem, unadorned as 
they really are, which I have observed to be owned 
by persons of eminent piety in the most different 
ranks, and amidst all the variety of education and 
capacity that can be imagined. As every eye is 
struck by consummate beauty, though in the plainest 
dress; and the sight of such an object impresses 
more than any labored description of complexion, fea- 
tures, or air, or any harangue on the nicest rules of 
proportion which could come into consideration ; so 
in the works of this great adept in true Christianity, we 
do not so much hear of goodness, as see it in its most 
genuine traces; see him a living image of his Divine 
Master, for such indeed his writings show, I had al- 
most said demonstrate him to have been, by such in- 
ternal characters, as surely a bad man could not 
counterfeit, and no good man can so much as suspect. 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 121 


“T am very sensible of it, as an honor done to 
me in the course of Divine Providence, that the 
task I have here executed should so very unexpect- 
edly be devolved upon me ; but I shall be gloriously 
rewarded, if the labor I have bestowed upon it be 
the occasion of promoting those great ends which 
animated the discourses and actions of the holy man, 
who has now dwelt so long among the blessed in- 
habitants of that world after which he so ardently 
aspired while yet amongst mortals. And let me be 
permitted to add, that I have some secret hope this 
publication, in these circumstances, may, among 
other good effects, promote that spirit of catholicism 
for which Leighton was so remarkable ; and extend 
it among various denominations of Christians in the 
northern and southern parts of our island. If the 
sincerest language or actions can express the dis- 
position of the heart, it will here be apparent that a 
diversity of judgment with regard to episcopacy 
and several forms both of discipline and worship 
connected with it, have produced in my mind no 
alienation, no indifference, toward Archbishop Leigh- 
ton, nor prevented my delighting in his works and 
profiting by them. In this respect I trust my 
brethren in Scotland will, for their own sake, and 
that of religion in general, show the like candor. 
On the other side, as I have observed with great 


122 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


pleasure and thankfulness, how much many of 
the established clergy in this part of Britain are 
advancing in moderation toward their dissenting 
brethren, I am fully assured they will not like these 
excellent pieces the worse for having passed through 
my hand. It is truly my grief that anything should 
divide me from the fullest communion with those to 
whom I am united in bonds of as tender affection 
as I bear to any of my fellow Christians: and it is 
my daily prayer that God will, by his gentle, but 
powerful influence on our minds, mutually dispose 
us more and more for such a further union as may 
most effectually consolidate the Protestant cause, 
remove the scandals our divisions have occasioned, 
and strengthen our hands in those efforts by which 
we are attempting—and might then, I hope, more 
successfully attempt—the service of our common 
Christianity. In the mean time, I desire most sin- 
cerely to bless God for any advances that are made 
toward it.” 


It may gratify some readers to have the will of 
Archbishop Leighton, showing how he disposed of 
the property he had at his death. It is as follows: 


* Ar Broapuurst, Feb. 17, 1683. 


“‘ Being at present (thanks be to God) in my ac- 
customed health of body, and soundness of mind 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 123 


and memory, I do write this with my own hand, to 
signify, that when the day I so much wished and 
longed for is come, that shall set me free of this 
prison of clay wherein I am lodged, what I leave 
behind me of money, goods, or chattels, or what- 
soever of any kind was called mine, I do devote to 
charitable uses; partly such as I have recommend- 
ed particularly to my sister, Mrs. Sapphira Light- 
maker, and her son, Master Edward Lightmaker of 
Broadhurst, and the remainder to such other chari- 
ties as their own discretion shall think fittest. Only 
I desire each of them to accept of a small token of 
a little grateful acknowledgment of their great kind- 
ness, and trouble they have had with me for some 
years that I was their guest, the proportion whereof 
(to remove their scruple of taking it) I did expressly 
name to themselves, while I was with them, before 
the writing hereof, and likewise after I have wrote 
it. But they need not give any account of it to 
any other, the whole being left to their disposal. 
Neither, I hope, will any other friends or relations 
of mine take it unkind, that I bequeath no legacy 
to any of them, designing, as is said, so entirely to 
charity the whole remains. Only my books I leave 
and bequeath to the Cathedral of Dunblane in Scot- 
land, to remain there for the use of the clergy of 
that diocess. I think I need no more, but that I 


124 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


appoint my said sister, Mrs. Sapphira Lightmaker 
of Broadhurst, and her son, Mr. Edward Light- 
maker of Broadhurst, joint executors of this my 
will, if they be both living at my decease, as I hope 
they shall ; or if but one of them shall be surviving, 
that one is to be the sole executor of it. I hope 
none will raise any question or doubt about this 
upon any omission or informality of expression in 
it; being for prevention thereof as plainly expressed 
as it could be conceived by me. And this I de- 
clare to be the last will and testament of 


“Rosert LeicHrTon.” 


We shall close this sketch of Leighton’s Life 
and Writings by a few extracts, which will give 
some idea of the beauties and excellences of his 
works. The first is on the same subject as the 
preceding remarks of Dr. Doddridge, namely, 


CHRISTIAN UNION AND LOVE. 


Be ye all of one mind—love as brethren. 1 Peter, 
iii. 8. 

“Of one mind,” doth not only mean union in 
judgment, but it extends likewise to affection and 
action. For Christians to be of one mind is not a 
careless indifferency ; this is not a loving agree- 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 125 


ment, but a dead stupidity, as it is accounting all 
questions in religion but matters of words and 
names, as Gallio did. This would not be a knitting 
together, but a freezing together, as cold congre- 
gates all bodies, how heterogeneous soever, sticks, 
stones, and water ; but heat makes first a separation 
of different things, and then unites those that are of 
the same nature. 

All that implicit Romish agreement that they 
boast of, what is it but a brutish ignorance of spi- 
ritual things, authorised and recommended for that 
very purpose. *Tis an easy way to agree if all 
. will put out their eyes, and follow the blind guiding 
of their judge of controversies. 

We shall give some few rules that may be of use 
to every particular Christian toward this common 
Christian good of unity of mind. 1. Beware of 
two extremes that often cause divisions—captivity 
to custom on the one hand, and affectation of novelty 
on the other. 2. Labor for a staid mind that will 
not be tossed with every wind of doctrine. Eph. 
iv. 14. 3.In unclear and doubtful things, be not 
pertinacious, as the weakest minds are readiest 
to be upon seeming reasons, which tried, will pos- 
sibly fall to nothing; yet they are most assured, 
and cannot suffer a different thought in any from 
their own. There is naturally this Popeness in 


126 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


every man’s mind, and most, I say, in the shallow- 
est—a kind of fancied infallibility in themselves, 
which makes them conTENTIOUS, (contrary to the 
apostle’s rule, Phil. ii. 3, ‘let nothing be done through 
strife and vain-glory,’’) and as earnest upon differing 
in the smallest punctilio as in a high article of faith. 
4. Join that which is then the spirit of love, in 
this particular. Not at all abating affection for 
every slight difference, (and this the most are a 
little to blame in,) whereas the abundance of that 
should rather fill up the gap of these petty disa- 
greements, that they do not appear, nor be at all 
sensibly to be found. 

In your private society seek unanimously your 
own and each other’s spiritual good, having one 
heart and mind as Christians. The peculiar con- 
verse of Christians is to put one another in mind of 
heaven, and things that are heavenly. 

“Love as brethren.” Love is the cause of union. 
They that have the same spirit animating them can- 
not but have the same mind and the same feelings. 
And this Spirit is derived from that Head, Christ, in 
whom Christians live, and move, and have their 
being. He is the first-born among many brethren. 
Rom. viii. 29. Christ is not ashamed to call them 
brethren. Heb. ii. 11. 

Where this love is and abounds, it will banish 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 127 


far away all those dissensions and bitternesses, and 
those frivolous mistakings which are so frequent 
among the most. It will pass by many offences 
and failings; it will cover a multitude of sins. 
But many that are called Christians, are not in- 
deed of this brotherhood, but are restless, unquiet 
spirits, biting and devouring one another. Gal. 
v. 15. 

I beseech you, adorn your holy profession, and 
testify yourselves the disciples and brethren of 
Jesus Christ by this mutual love. Seek to under- 
stand what it is; and, to know it more practically, 
consider that source of love—that love that the 
Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be 
called the sons of God, 1 John iii.1; and so be 
brethren, and thence draw more of this sweet stream 
of love. ‘God is love,” says the apostle, 1 John 
iv. 8; therefore surely where there is most of 
God, there is most of this divine grace—this holy 
love. Look upon, and study much, that infinite 
love of God, and his Son Jesus Christ, toward-us. 
He gave his only-begotten Son. The Son gave 
himself, and this he hath recommended to us, that 
even as he loved us, so should we love one another. 
John xv. 12. We know we cannot reach this 
highest pattern ; that is not meant, but the more we 
look on it the higher we shall reach in this love, 


128 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


and shall learn some measure of such love on earth 
as is in heaven; and that which so begins here 
shall be perfected there 


SIN, THE CAUSE OF CHRIST’S SUFFERINGS. 


At his apprehending, besides the soldiers, that 
invisible crowd of sins he was to suffer for came 
about him; for it was they that laid strongest hold — 
on him; he could easily have shaken off all the 
rest, as appears, John xviii. 6; but our sins laid 
the arrest on him, being accounted his, as it is in 
Psalm xl. 12, “mine iniquities.” Now among these 
were even those sins we call small; they were of 
the number that took him, and they were among 
those instruments of his bloodshed. If the greater 
were as the spear that pierced his side, the less were 
as the nails that pierced his hands and his feet ; and 
the very least as the thorns that were set on his 
precious head. And the multitude of them made 
up what was wanting in their magnitude: though 
they were small, they were many. 


THE PARDON OF SIN. 


The soul perplexed about the pardon of sin finds 
no relief in all other enjoyments; all propositions 
of lower comforts are unsavory and troublesome to 
it. -Tell it of peace and prosperity ; say, however 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 129 


the world go, you shall have ease and pleasure, and 
you shall be honored and esteemed by all; yea, 
though you could make a man sure of these, yet, 
if his conscience be working and stirred about the 
matter of his sin, and the wrath of God which is 
tied close to sin, he will wonder at your imperti- 
nency, in that you speak so far from the purpose. 
Say what you will of these, he still asks, ‘‘ What 
do you mean by this? those things answer not me. 
Do you think I can find comfort in them so long as 
my sin is unpardoned, and there is a sentence of 
eternal death standing above my head? I feel 
even an impress of somewhat of that hot indigna- 
tion; some flashes of it flying and lighting upon 
the face of my soul; and how can I take pleasure 
in these things you speak of ? And though I should 
be senseless, and feel nothing of this all my life, 
yet how soon shall I have done with it, and the de- 
lights that reach no farther ! and then to have ever- 
lasting burnings, eternity of wrath to enter upon ; 
how can I be satisfied with that estate?” All you 
offer a man in this posture is as if you should set 
dainty fare, and bring music with it, to a man lying 
almost pressed to death under great weights, and 
should bid him eat and be merry, but lift not off his 
pressure: you do but mock the man, and add to his 


misery. On the other hand, he that hath got but a 
Arch. Leigh. 9 


130 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


view of his Christ, and reads his own pardon in 
Christ’s sufferings, can rejoice in this in the midst 
of all other sufferings, and look on death without 
apprehension, yea, with gladness, for the sting is 
out. Christ hath made all pleasant to him by this 
one thing, that “he suffered once for sins.” Christ 
hath perfumed the cross and the grave, and made 
all sweet. The pardoned man finds himself light, 
skips and leaps, and, “ through Christ strengthen- 
ing him,” he ean encounter any trouble. If you 
think to shut up his spirit in outward sufferings, he 
is now, as Samson in his strength, able to carry 
away on his back the gates with which you would 
enclose him. Yea, he ean submit patiently to the 
Lord’s hand in any correction: “Thou hast for- 
given my sin, therefore, deal with me as thou wilt, 
all is well.” 


THE AFFLICTED CONSCIENCE. 


Ask an afflicted conscience if Jesus, that is, a 
Saviour, be not a precious word, that hath a sove- 
reign value, both a refreshing smell and a healing 
virtue. The hammer of the law may break a stony 
heart in pieces, but it is only the blood of Jesus that 
can soften it. And where it is effectually poured, 
either upon a wounded soul, it heals it, or upon a 
hard heart, it mollifies it. For that other name, 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 131 


Curist, well may it be called “an ointment poured 
forth,” for it signifies his anointing. And that the 
sweet savor of this name may affect, read but that 
one passage, Isaiah Ixi. 1, “‘' The Spirit of the Lord 
God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed 
me to preach good tidings unto the meek,” etc. 
What inestimable riches of consolation are there in 
each of these effects, to which Christ was anointed ! 
and yet we find not a word among them all for a 
proud, stiffnecked sinner. Here are “ good tidings,” 
but it is to the meek ; comfortable “ binding up,” 
but it is for the “ broken-hearted ;” liberty, but it is 
for captives and prisoners groaning under their 
chains, and desirous to be delivered; not for such 
as delight in their bondage. There is “oil of joy,” 
and “ garments of praise,’’ but they are provided 
for mourning dejected spirits that need them; not 
for the impenitent. On the contrary, there is a 
terrible word interjected in the midst of these pro- 
mises, “The day of vengeance of our God;” and 
that is the portion of Christ’s enemies, and such are 
all incorrigible sinners. 

When you look through a red glass, the whole 
heavens seem bloody ; but through pure uncolored 
glass you receive the clear light that is so refresh- 
ing and comfortable to behold. When sin unpar- 
doned is betwixt, and we look on God through that, 


132 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


we can perceive nothing but anger and enmity in 
his countenance; but make Christ once the me- 
dium, our pure Redeemer, and through him, as 
clear transparent glass, the beams of God’s favor- 
able countenance shine in upon the soul. The 
Father cannot look upon his well-beloved Son but 
graciously and pleasingly. God looks on us out of 
Christ, sees us rebels, and fit to be condemned ; we 
look on God as being just and powerful to punish 
us; but when Christ is betwixt, God looks on us, in 
him, as justified, and we look on God, in him, as 
pacified, and see the smiles of his favorable coun- 
tenance. Take Christ out, all is terrible ; inter- 
pose him, all is full of peace: therefore set him 
always betwixt, and by him we shall believe in 
God. 

It is the want of activity of faith in Jesus, that 
Keeps us so imperfect, and wrestling still with our 
corruptions without any advancement. We wrestle 
in our own strength too often, and so are justly, 
yea, necessarily foiled: it cannot be otherwise till 
we make him our strength. This we are still for- 
getting, and we had need to be put in mind of it, 
and frequently to recollect it. We shall be at 
doing for ourselves, and insensibly fall into this 
folly, even after much smarting for it, if we be not 
watchful against it; there is this wretched natural 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 133 


independency in us that is so hard to beat out. All 
our projectings are but castles in the air, imaginary 
buildings without a foundation, till once laid on 
Christ. But never shall we find heart peace, sweet 
peace, and progress in holiness, till we be driven 
from it, to make him all our strength; till we be 
brought to do nothing, to attempt nothing, to hope or 
expect nothing, but in him; and then shall we 
indeed find his fulness and all-sufficiency, and “ be 
more than conquerors through him who hath 
loved us.” 


THE SOUL RESIGNED TO CHRIST. 


When a soul is busy asking after Jesus Christ, if 
it be inquired, “ What would you do with him ?” 
“Why this is my purpose,” will it say, “I would 
worship him; I would not only be saved by him, 
but I would fall down and adore him, and acknow- 
ledge him my King; and if I had anything better 
than another, I would offer it him.” — “ But what 
hast thou? Hast thou rich presents for him 2?” 
“ Alas! no. Iam a foolish and a poor creature, 
and I have nothing to offer.” “Nothing! Hast 
thou a heart?”? “Yes, a heart I have: but, alas! 
there can be nothing more unfit for him, and un- 
worthy of him; it is dark, and foul, and hard ; all 
disorder and filthiness.” “Yet wilt thou give it 


134 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


him as it is, and be willing that he use and dispose 
of it as it pleases him?” “O that he would ac- 
cept of it, that he would take it upon any terms! 
Here it is; if it would fly out from this offer, I 
would he would lay hold of it! O that it were 
once received by him; that it were in his hand, 
and then let him do with it what seems him good !”” 
“Sayest thouso? ‘Then itis done. Give it really 
and freely, and he will take and make it better, at 
its worst, than all the gold, and frankincense, and 
myrrh, of all those rich countries where they 
abound ; and will purify, rectify, and make it quite 
another thing than it is; and it shall never repent 
thee to have made a gift of it to him. He shall 
frame it to his own likeness, and in return will give 
thee himself, and be thine for ever.”’ 


WHO IS HE THAT CONDEMNETH ? 


I add yet further, If thou sayest yet that thou 
findest none of all this, yet I say there is warrant 
for thee to believe and lay hold on this righteous- 
ness here held forth, to the end that thou mayest 
then find those things in thee, and find comfort in 
them. Thou art convinced of ungodliness, then 
believe on him that justifies the ungodly ; thou art 
condemned, yet Christ is dead and risen; flee to 
him as such, as the Lamb slain, “he that was dead 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOF LEIGHTON. 135 


and is alive,” and then say, “‘ Who is he that con- 
demneth 2?” It is Christ that died, or rather that is 
risen. Who shall accuse? It is true, they may 
clamor and make a noise, both Satan and thy con- 
science, but how can they fasten any accusation on 
thee? If they dare accuse, yet they cannot con- 
demn, when the Judge, who is greater than all, hath 
acquitted thee, and declared thee free, and hath the 
absolute power of the sentence: all charges and 
libels come too late, after he hath once pronounced 
a soul righteous. And who shall condemn? “It 
is Christ that died.” If the sentence of the law be 
brought forth, yet here is the answer—it ought not 
to be twice satisfied: now once it is in Christ; he 
hath died, and that stands for the believer. Who- 
soever flees to him, and lays hold on him for life, he 
cannot die again; nor canst thou die, for whom he 
died once—“ or rather is risen’’—that raises the 
assurance higher, and sets it firmer ; for this evi- 
dences that in his death all was paid. When he 
being the surety and seized on for debt, once death’s 
prisoner, yet was set free, this clears the matter 
that there is no more to be said. And yet further, 
in sign that all is done, he is raised to the height of 
honor above all principalities and powers, he is set 
at the right hand of the Father; and there he sits, 
and lives—to make intercession, to sue out the ful- 


136 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


filling of all for believers, the bringing of them 
home—lives to see all made good that he died and 
covenanted for. 


GLORYING IN CHRIST. 


if we knew him rightly, we would not sell the 
least glance or beam of the light of his countenance 
for the highest favor of mortal men, though it were 
constant and unchangeable, which it is not. It is 
ignorance of Christ that maintains the credit of 
those vanities we admire. The Christian man that 
is truly acquainted with him, enamored with the 
brightness of his beauty, can generously trample 
upon the smilings of the world with the one foot, 
and her frownings with the other. If he be rich or 
honorable, or both, yet he glories not in that; but 
Christ, who is “the glory of the Lord,” is even 
then his chiefest glory; and the light of Christ 
obscures that worldly splendor, in his estimation. 
And, as the enjoyment of Christ overtops all his 
other joys, so it overcomes his griefs. As ‘nat 
great light drowns the light of prosperity, so it 
shines bright in the darkness of affliction: no dun- 
geon so close that can keep out the rays of Christ’s 
love from his beloved prisoners. ‘The world can 
no more take away this light than it can give it. 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 137 


RULES FOR A HOLY LIFE. 


1. Never do anything with obstinacy, being too 
earnest, or too much given to it; but with continual 
meekness of heart and mind, lie at the foot of God, 
and say, “Lord, I desire nothing, neither in my- 
self, nor in any creature, save only to know and exe- 
cute thy blessed will.” Say alway in thy heart, 
“ Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do? ‘Trans- 
form my will into thine: fill full, and swallow up 
as it were, my affections with thy love, and with an 
insatiable desire to honor thee, and despise myself.” 

2. If thou aspire to attain to the perfect knitting 
and union with God, know that it requireth a per- 
fect ex-spoliation, and denudation, or bare naked- 
ness, and utter forsaking of all sin, yea, of all 
creatures, and of thyself particularly—even that 
thy mind and understanding, thy affections and 
desires, thy memory and fancy, be made bare of 
all things in the world, and all sensual pleasures in 
them, so as thou wouldst be content that the bread 
which thou eatest had no more savor than a stone, 
and yet, from the delectation thou feelest in it, turn 
thy heart to his praises and love that made it. 

3. The more perfectly thou livest in the abstrac- 
tion, and departure, and bare nakedness of thy mind 


138 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


from all creatures, the more nakedly and purely 
shalt thou have the fruition of the Lord thy God, 
and shalt live the more heavenly and angelical a 
life. Therefore, 

4. Labor above all things most exactly to forsake 
all for him; and chiefly to forsake and contemn 
thyself; purely loving him, and in a manner for- 
getting thyself and all things, for the vehement 
burning love of him: thus thy mind will run so 
much upon him, that thou wilt take no heed what is 
sweet or bitter, neither wilt thou consider time or 
place, nor mark one person from another, for the 
wonder and love of thy Lord God, and the desire 
of his blessed will, pleasure, and honor in all things. 
And whatsoever good thou doest, know and think 
that God doeth it, and not thou. 

5. Choose always (to the best of thy skill) what 
is most to God’s honor, and most like unto Christ 
and his example, and most profitable to thy neigh- 
bor, and most against thy own proper will, and 
least serviceable to thy own praise and exaltation. 

6. If thou continue faithful in this spiritual work 
and travail, God, at length, without doubt, will hear 
thy knocking, and will deliver thee from all thy 
spiritual trouble; from all the tumults, noise, and 
incumbrance of cogitations and fancies, and from 
all earthly affections, which thou canst by no better 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 139 


means put away, than by continual and fervent 
desire of the love of God. 

7. Do not at any time let or hinder his working, 
by following thine own will ; for behold, how much 
thou dost the more perfectly forsake thine own will, 
and the love of thyself, and of all worldly things, 
so much the more deeply and safely shalt thou be 
knit unto God, and increase in his true and pure 
love. 


1. Exercise thyself in the knowledge and deep 
consideration of our Lord God, calling humbly to 
mind how excellent and incomprehensible he is ; 
and this knowledge shalt thou rather endeavor to 
obtain by fervent desire and devout prayer, than by 
high study and outward labor. It is the singular 
gift of God, and certainly very precious. 

2. Pray, then, “Most gracious Lord, whom to 
know is the very bliss and felicity of man’s soul— 
and yet none can know thee unless thou wilt open 
and show thyself unto him—vouchsafe, of thy infi- 
nite mercy, now and ever to enlighten my heart and 
mind to know thee and thy most holy and perfect 
will, to the honor and glory of thy name. Amen.” 

3. Then lift up thy heart to consider (not with 
too great violence, but soberly) the eternal and infi- 


140 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


nite power of God, who created all things by his 
excellent wisdom: his unmeasurable goodness, and 
incomprehensible love ; for he is very and only God, 
most excellent, most high, most glorious, the ever- 
lasting and unchangeable goodness, an eternal sub- 
stance, a charity infinite, so excellent and ineflable 
in himself, that all dignity, perfection, and goodness, 
that is possible to be spoken or thought of, cannot 
sufficiently express the smallest part thereof. 

4. Consider Jesus the Redeemer and Husband of 
thy soul, and walk with him as becomes a chaste 
spouse, with reverence and lowly shamefulness, obe- 
_ dience and submission. 

5. Then turn to the deep, profound consideration 
of thyself, thine own nothingness, and thy extreme 
defilement and pollution, thy natural aversion from 
God, and that thou must, by conversion to him again, 


and union with him, be made happy. 

6. Consider thyself and all creatures as nothing, 
in comparison of thy Lord; that so thou mayest not 
only be content, but desirous to be unknown, or be- 
ing known, to be contemned and despised of all men, 
yet without thy faults or deservings, as much as thou 
canst. 

7. Pray, ““O God, infuse into my heart thy heay- 
enly light and blessed charity, that I may know and 
love thee above all things; and above all things 


Pa 


LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON, 141 


loathe and abhor myself. Grant that I may be so 
ravished in the wonder and love of thee, that I may 
forget myself and all things; feel neither prosperity 
nor adversity ; may not fear to suffer all the pains 
vf this world rather than to be parted and pulled 
away from thee, whose perfections infinitely exceed 
all thought and understanding. O! let me find thee 
more inwardly and verily present with me than I 
am with myself; and make me most circumspect 
how I do use myself in the presence of thee, my 
holy Lord. Cause me alway to remember how 
everlasting and constant is the love thou bearest to- 
ward me: such a charity and continual care as 
though thou hadst no more creatures in heaven or 
earth beside me. What amI? A vile worm.” 

8. Then aspire to a great contrition for thy sins, 
and hatred of them, and abhorring of thyself for 
them ; then crave pardon in the blood of Jesus Christ ; 
and then offer up thyself, soul and body, an oblation 
or sacrifice, in and through him; as they did of old, 
laying wood on the altar, and then burning up all: 
so this shall be a sacrifice of sweet savor, and very 
acceptable to God. 

9. Offer all that thou hast, to be nothing, to use 
nothing of all that thou hast about thee and is called 
thine, but to his honor and glory; and resolve, 
through his grace, to use all the powers of thy soul, 


142 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 


and every member of thy body, to his service, as 
formerly thou hast done to sin. 

10. Consider the passion of thy Lord, how he was 
buffeted, scourged, reviled, stretched with nails on 
the cross, and hung on it three long hours; suffered 
all the contempt and shame, and all the inconceiva- 
ble pain of it, for thy sake. 

11. Then turn thy heart to him, humbly saying, 
“Lord Jesus, whereas I daily fall, and am ready to 
sin, vouchsafe me grace, as oft as I shall, to rise 
again; let me never presume, but always most 
meekly and humbly acknowledge my wretchedness 
and frailty, and repent, with a firm purpose to amend ; 
and let me not despair because of my great frailty, 
but ever trust in thy most loving mercy and readi- 
ness to forgive.” 


THE END. 


DATE DUE 


DEMCO 38-297 


wind 


| DiveS. 922.341 L529L 


| 


